NASA images of Hurricane Milton, showing unusually high sea surface temperatures, highlight how climate conditions can accelerate hurricane intensification. The Gulf of Mexico’s waters, particularly those above 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit, played a key role in the rapid development of Milton into a Category 5 storm.

"Numerical models in the past five years or so have improved to resolve hurricanes and typhoons at global scales and they do agree that the intensification of hurricanes - more hurricanes of strength 4 or 5 - and typhoons, and a tendency for depression to turn more easily into hurricanes is the result of climate change," says Annalisa Bracco, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. 

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