Key Points
Just a week after Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified and slammed the Florida coast with monster storm surges, Tropical Storm Lee has grown into a massive hurricane in the Atlantic..
By feeding on exceptionally warm waters, it has undergone rapid intensification, a transformation that scientists define as an increase in sustained wind speeds of 30 knots (35 miles per hour) or more within 24 hours..
Today, Dunions team is flying out to Lee in a research aircraft that will parachute instruments into the storm to measure its humidity, along with wind speed, temperature, and pressure. Theyll also fly a drone closer to the ocean surface to measure how energy is being exchanged between the sea and the storm..
While scientists will need to do specific studies to see how much climate change contributed to Idalias rapid intensification near the coast, it was a scenario that we may see more in the future, Wang says.. Similarly, climate scientist Karthik Balaguru, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has found that the Atlantic coast is becoming a breeding ground for rapidly intensifying hurricanes..
On the Atlantic coast, this reduced wind shear would favor the rapid intensification of hurricanes nearing landfall...
