Eye On The Storm: Climate Change Turning Life In The United States Upside Down / Jeff Masters

Meteorologist Jeff Masters joins me in this interview to discuss the damage wrought by Hurricane Helene in the southeastern United States, as he has written extensively about for the Yale Climate Connections blog, Eye on the Storm.

I asked Jeff Masters to elucidate the connections between broader trends observed in climate science to meteorological events that impact human societies in the more immediate sense, i.e. hurricanes and their knock on effects. With the arrival of Hurricane Helene in the Big Bend region of Florida on September 27th, it had reached Category Four intensity, causing significant flooding as the storm moved northward over the next few days, hitting parts of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. Cities and communities were deluged, from small Appalachian towns to major population centers like Asheville, North Carolina. Since this interview was recorded on October 3rd, more recent information has the death toll from this storm at over 200. The infrastructural damage is record-breaking and immense, with Masters and his collaborator, Bob Henson, writing in a post published October 2nd, that “Helene is now the deadliest mainland U.S. hurricane since Katrina."

After describing the nature of this storm and the damage it has wrought, I asked Jeff Masters to contextualize this year's hurricane season within the larger trends of human-caused climate change, as written about in his essay, When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? We discussed the economic impacts climate disruption will have on the national, and by extension, global economy in the coming decades, citing shocks to the real estate and insurance markets as sea levels rise and regions of the continental United States become increasingly vulnerable to more severe storms and flooding. And finally, as we close our discussion, Jeff provides his opinion on what comes next, and how he understands taking action involves "cathedral thinking."

Bio:

Jeff Masters, Ph.D., worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. After a near-fatal flight into category 5 Hurricane Hugo, he left the Hurricane Hunters to pursue a safer passion - earning a 1997 Ph.D. in air pollution meteorology from the University of Michigan. In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served as its chief meteorologist and on its Board of Directors until it was sold to the Weather Company in 2012. Between 2005-2019, his Category 6 blog was one of the Internet's most popular and widely quoted sources of extreme weather and climate change information. Jeff currently writes for Eye on the Storm at Yale Climate Connections.

Episode Notes:

A major hub to contribute to mutual aid efforts in the South is through Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Other significant resources can be found in this post by It’s Going Down: Mutual Aid And Autonomous Disaster Relief Groups Mobilize In Wake Of Hurricane Helene

Read Jeff Masters’ regular updates at Yale Climate Connections blog, Eye on the Storm

Read the articles Helene is now the deadliest mainland U.S. hurricane since Katrina, and When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down?

The music featured is by Nick Vander, used with permission by the artist.