Climate change intensified deadly Hurricane Helene: Report

New study says torrential rain and powerful winds were about 10 percent more intense due to climate change.

Climate change intensified Hurricane Helene, which late last month killed at least 230 people and devastated large swaths of the southeastern United States, according to researchers.

The warming climate increased Helene’s wind speeds and rainfall, and made the high sea temperatures that fuelled the storm up to 500 times more likely, the World Weather Attribution said in a report released on Wednesday.

The effects of climate change increased Helene’s wind speeds by about 11 percent, or 13 miles per hour (21 kilometres per hour), and increased the rainfall it dumped on the US by about 10 percent, the researchers said.

“All aspects of this event were amplified by climate change to different degrees,” co-author Ben Clarke, a researcher at Imperial College London, told a news conference.

“We’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” he warned.