How We Talk About the Weather

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How we talk about the weather / How climate change is affecting tropical storms

Episode 260831/ 31 Aug 2026

4.9★(8,369 ratings)·15,371 students

Transcript

Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Phil

Climate change is affecting weather around the world. Is it changing hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons? Here's BBC weather forecaster and presenter, Darren Bett.

Darren Bett

Climate change is impacting many things. It's making severe weather happen more often and it's making severe weather more severe. And we're likely to see changes with storms as well. Now, we don't expect that there will be more storms, but we expect that more of the storms will be stronger, more powerful, with stronger winds potentially causing much more damage and disruption.

Climate scientists also think that storms are slowing down, they're not moving across as quickly, and that means if a storm is in the same area for longer the winds will be stronger for longer, and the rain will last for longer producing more flooding and more likelihood of flooding and landslides and also mudslides.

The reason we think storms are likely to be stronger in the future is because of the sea surface temperature. Now remember a hurricane, a typhoon, a cyclone gathers strength from warm waters and we know our waters are becoming warmer and if a storm can move over a larger area of water with sea surface temperatures over 27 degrees, it's got more opportunity to strengthen and the winds to really pick up.

Another element of climate change, not just how our waters are warming, but how our atmosphere is warming and that means the rain that does fall is likely to be heavier producing much greater impact. And as if that wasn't enough, storm surge, that's that body of water that gets swept inland and produces widespread flooding. Climate change is warming our seas, and the sea levels are rising. That potentially could mean that it's a storm surge which is one element of a storm that produces more casualties than any other, those storm surges could become even more dangerous.

So, storms like hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones already impact so many people's lives and it could be that they're becoming more powerful in the years ahead.

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