The "Most Powerful Storm in History" Won't Keep Its Title for Long

When one of the strongest storms ever to form in modern times blew through the Philippines, it left a trail of death at least 2,500-wide in its wake. Typhoon Haiyan's winds blew at sustained speeds of 195 miles per hour, and blasted out some gusts that reached 235 mph—it was like an island-sized tornado that whipped up 20 feet of flooding, too. An entire city was wiped off the map, along with many smaller villages and communities. It now ranks as the deadliest natural disaster in the history of a nation routinely besieged by earthquakes, hurricanes, and eruptions.

And scientists say that even more powerful storms are on the way. So what's currently being heralded as "the most powerful storm in history" won't keep its title for long. Warmer ocean temperatures provide more fuel to storms, and thanks to climate change, those oceans are absorbing more heat than at any point in human history.

“Once [cyclones] do form, they get most of their energy from the surface waters of the ocean,” Professor Will Steffen, a researcher at ANU and a member of the Climate Council, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We know sea-surface temperatures are warming pretty much around the planet, so that's a pretty direct influence of climate change on the nature of the storm.”

Not only that, but rising sea levels mean cities are more vulnerable to flooding and storm surge, too. In fact, the chief of the World Meteorological Organization stressed this very point at the international climate talks today, directly linking the devastation in the Philippines to global warming.

“The Philippines is reeling from the devastation wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to hit the country and one of the most intense ever recorded anywhere," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. "Although individual tropical cyclones cannot be directly attributed to climate change, higher sea levels are already making coastal populations more vulnerable to storm surges. We saw this with tragic consequences in the Philippines."

While uncertainty clouds scientists' understanding of storms' frequency—some models show hurricanes growing slightly less common—most agree that they'll become more destructive. The WMO says that "although the relationship between climate change and the frequency of tropical cyclones is a matter of much research, it is expected that their impact will be more intense."

And the intensity of storms like Haiyan is nothing short terrifying. Here is what they leave in their wake, according to what may be the most apocalyptic Associated Press's report of the year: "Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings—some of the thousands believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves."

To fully grasp the scope of this category 5 monster, you really have to see it from space. Here's a satellite photo of the behemoth, snapped as it swallowed a handful of islands whole in a violent veil of water and wind.

There's more where that came from. "There are physical arguments and evidence that there is a risk of more intense hurricanes," Myles Allen, chief of the climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford told The Guardian.

Yet back in the US, public officials, commenters, and the media did the same thing they've done for years now—endlessly question whether global warming played a roll in this unprecedented event, and if so, how much. It's a bit of theater played out, perhaps, to pacify citizens who may otherwise be wondering why the largest and richest nation in the world has not yet taken any major steps to curtail or prepare for such destruction. Because the rest of the world gets the link.

In the Philippines, they cut to the chase. Leaders made the link between climate and typhoon Haiyan explicit, and immediately demanded global action at the international talks that commenced with the aftermath of the storm.

Naderev "Yeb" Sano, the Philippines' lead negotiator, went so far as to proclaim that he'd begin a hunger strike, and fast until the world's nations agreed to make meaningful progress on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. He gave an impassioned, tearful speech exhorting the world to agree on restrictions to limit coal, oil, and gas use.

“What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness. We can stop this madness, right here, in Warsaw,” Sano said.

If recent history is any guide, his plea, like those of leaders of the most vulnerable nations before him, will likely fall on deaf ears. The US is quite fine with its massive fossil-fueled economy, thanks, and China still wants coal and cars to hurl it towards prosperity, so the impasse will stand.

But data don't lie, and the conditions are worsening. The AP notes that "data compiled from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows sea temperatures were about 0.5 to 1 degree above normal in the waters to the east of the Philippines as Haiyan began forming." But that is the new normal. Global sea surface temperatures have already risen about 0.5 ˚F above the 1971-2000 average, and it's only 2013.

That means more energy up for grabs for typhoons, and more disasters waiting to happen. There's a reason Sano is so desperate, and that the rest of us probably should be, too, even if we don't live on a poor, densely populated coastal region. A couple debilitating climate change-fueled hurricanes have smashed into the US, too, after all. Hundreds of lives were lost, billions of dollars of damage done.

And the biggest is still yet to come, as the climatic trend towards a much warmer world is all but locked-in now. There will be a storm more devastating than Katrina, deadlier than Haiyan, and more catastrophic than Sandy—the ripening conditions make that all but an inevitability.

There's a simple anecdote that continues to surface in reports on the tragedy in the Philippines, and it makes sense—it's deeply allegorical. There was a famous, century-old tree with a yard-thick trunk, that had withstood the most violent typhoons of the decades past. This time it finally fell.

"In Mabolo, another town on the northern flank of Cebu, the winds toppled a locally famous tree with a trunk roughly a yard in diameter," The New York Times reported. "The tree had withstood every typhoon for more than a century."

Nothing else this big had hit, ever before.