News
How Climate Change Intensified Helene and the Appalachian Floods
Rain just before the storm set the stage for a catastrophe.
By Sean Sublette
Helene is the fourth Gulf Coast hurricane to make landfall this year. Only five other years had that many since comprehensive hurricane records began in 1851.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
State of Play
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.