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This sounds like an interesting and plausible hypothesis. But just
being interesting and plausible is not enough. Do you have a
reference to share for data about change in temperature profile --
particularly in the Gulf of Mexico? Can you point to correlations
between persistence and temperature profiles?
Why do storms normally weaken—and why didn’t Harvey? As mentioned
above, hurricanes feed and grow on warm ocean surface waters. But
as they grow, their strong winds often pick up seawater, churning
the oceans and moving the warmest waters deep below the surface.
The same winds also bring newer, colder water closer to the
atmosphere, which usually serves to drain energy and weaken the
storm.
That didn’t happen with Harvey. The hurricane churned up water 100
or even 200 meters below the surface, said Trenberth, but this
water was still warm—meaning that the storm could keep growing and
strengthening. “
“The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so of the total
rainfall coming out of the storm,” he said. “It may have been a
strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway—but
[human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably.”
Extreme Storms
KEY FINDINGS
Human activities have contributed substantially to observed
ocean–atmosphere variability in the Atlantic Ocean (medium
confidence), and these changes have contributed to the observed
upward trend in North Atlantic hurricane activity since the 1970s
(medium confidence).
areas of the ocean where warm water pools extend deeper below the
surface than the seasonal surface warm water, and are then available
as ammunition for intensifying hurricanes passing overhead.