According to a collaborative research released on Thursday by the scientific teams World Weather Attribution and Climate Central, global warming induced by the burning of coal, oil, and gas was the larger of the two offenders, adding roughly 6 mph (almost 10 kph) to its already monstrous strength. El Niño contributed slightly less, roughly 5 mph (8 kph), according to a research co-author.
The analysis concluded that climate change made the conditions that fuelled the hurricane 23 times more likely, while El Niño made them 14 times more likely, a transient, natural warming of regions of the Pacific. According to the study, this is because the waters were 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31.2 degrees Celsius), up to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) warmer than usual.
This year’s very powerful El Niño has broken records for the intensity and duration of Pacific storms. At two and a half days, Polo set the record for the most time spent at Category 5 in the Pacific. This hurricane was stronger than it would have been because of both El Niño and climate change, but climate change’s impact is greater than El Niño’s, according to Friederike Otto, a climate scientist and co-author of the study who leads the global scientific team behind World Weather Attribution.
El Niño comes and goes, but climate change’s effects only worsen. This implies that every storm that develops in the East Pacific now carries at least this climate-change signal, making it more powerful. And that will only increase as long as we continue to consume fossil fuels,” Otto continued. Researchers found that Polo would have been a monster storm even without El Niño and climate change. However, any increase in wind speed can significantly increase the damage.
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