Hurricane Patricia likely not caused by global warming

October has been unseasonably warm. I could dress up as a tourist in Hawaii for Halloween and no one would be surprised.

So when Hurricane Patricia popped up on the radar, I couldn’t help but wonder if her intensity was a result of rising global temperatures.

The earth-loving, climate change advocate in me desperately wanted this fact to be true, but as it turns out, my instincts were wrong.

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Hurricane Patricia is the most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Patricia was rated on Thursday as a Category 1. By Friday, she had intensified to a Category 5 with peak winds of more than 200 miles per hour.

Patricia’s power grabbed my attention. Surely this storm had to be the result of rising sea temperatures caused by human activity.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory it is “premature to conclude that human activities … have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”

In my excitement over a possible connection to climate change, I had completely overlooked the other factors that contribute to a hurricane’s intensity, things like oceanic currents, atmospheric pressure, humidity and location.

Hurricane Patricia formed in perfect conditions during an El Niño year. El Niño brings in a current of warm water to the Eastern Pacific basin. According to an article in New Scientist, “hurricane activity tends to get a boost” during El Niño conditions.

Currently, there is no way to prove climate change affected the intensity of Hurricane Patricia. Yes, the ocean warming phenomenon El Niño has also been record breaking this year, but as mentioned on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “the link between climate change and El Niño is not understood.”

We do know warmer ocean temperatures create more powerful storms, regardless of why this warming occurred. Hurricane Patricia, though not directly caused by climate change, was nothing more than an example of what will happen if ocean temperatures continue to rise.

The NOAA’s  Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory states that by the end of the 21st century, “anthropogenic warming … will likely cause tropical cyclones globally to be more intense on average.”

This time around, climate change was not the culprit of this perfect storm. But if society continues on the path it’s on and ocean temperatures continue to rise, it’s possible that Hurricane Patricia will have plenty of siblings in the future.

Julia Mikulec is an English and journalism sophomore.

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