Earth Today | Climate connection made
Scientists say Melissa’s strength fuelled by global warming
Published:Thursday | November 13, 2025 | 12:08 AM
THE CLIMATE Studies Group Mona, together with World Weather Attribution, has done a rapid assessment that reveals a clear link between Hurricane Melissa and changes to the climate associated with the human consumption of fossil fuels, including oil and gas.
“Overall, it is clear that the rainfall, wind speeds from, and conditions leading to, Hurricane Melissa have all increased because of climate change. In particular, winds have become robustly more likely and intense. Jamaica and eastern Cuba are experiencing more intense extreme rainfall and we expect this to continue as the world warms further, and the potential intensity conditions leading to such an event will continue to become more intense,” said the researchers.
The team includes Jamaica’s Professor Michael Taylor and Dr Tannecia Stephenson, both celebrated climate scientists and co-leads for the Climate Studies Group, Mona. They were writing in the paper titled ‘Climate change enhanced intensity of Hurricane Melissa, testing limits of adaptation in Jamaica and eastern Cuba’.
“It is therefore also overwhelmingly likely that the impacts of Hurricane Melissa were more severe as a result of climate change. These impacts were complex and occurred over multiple regions in different ways. Additionally, individual variables such as wind may drive impacts in different ways, such as through direct damage and driving storm surge, which may then compound rainfall-based flooding,” they added.
In particular, the researchers noted that while the changes in the magnitude of wind speeds seem small (~5 m/s), “the damage potential of wind in the region of Category 5 storms scales with the cube of intensity”.
“Even small changes can therefore result in substantial increases in damage potential. It is also clear that the Caribbean has received far less attention than the mainland US in assessments of how climate change is influencing hurricanes now and with further warming,” they added.
According to the researchers, this is not surprising, given earlier and more recent research.
“On a global scale, recent decades have seen an increase in more intense tropical cyclones (Category 3-5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale), but no change in the overall number of tropical cyclones. Recent studies on specific tropical cyclones, as well as physical understanding, suggest that extreme rainfall from tropical cyclones is increasing,” they noted.
“This is explained partly by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, which states that warmer air holds more moisture at a rate of six-seven per cent/degrees Celsius. In the future, the proportion of the most intense tropical cyclones (categories 4-5) is projected to increase with further warming, as well as the average and maximum precipitation rates from these storms,” the research noted, citing the work of other researchers.
“Basin-specific changes are less certain, more variable, and extend to other properties of tropical cyclones. For instance, in the North Atlantic, tropical cyclones making landfall over the contiguous US have slower translation speeds and are more frequently stalling or meandering, leading to more intense impacts as extreme conditions are sustained for longer periods over a given location. In addition, North Atlantic hurricanes are increasing in both intensification rate and maximum intensity, which is unlikely to be explained by natural variability,” they added.
The findings come even as world leaders meet in Belem, Brazil for COP30, the global climate talks – staging ground for climate response actions, including climate financing, adaptation, mitigation, technology transfer, loss and damage, as well as cross-country collaboration.
Caribbean and other small island developing states have long championed the need for special consideration, given their particular vulnerabilities to climate change impacts. In addition to extreme hurricane events, other climate change impacts for the Caribbean include ongoing global warming, sea-level rise and coastal erosion, together with the associated risks to food and freshwater security and compromised public health.