Hurricane Idalia has triggered a mass evacuation on Florida’s Gulf Coast, as it has now moved through Southern California and the Southern States of the USA; making landfall on Florida’s east coast as a Category 3 storm, sustaining winds of 65 mph. Hurricane Idalia now makes its way through Georgia and into the North Atlantic Ocean, weakening into a tropical storm; yet it marks the strongest hurricane to hit the Florida region in more than 125 years, and the first hurricane to hit the USA this year.

The hurricane has caused flooding in many areas and left 460,000 people in Florida and Georgia without power, causing Ron De Santis, Governor of Florida, to introduce a mandatory curfew from 10:00pm to 6:00am, aimed at protecting the people of the impacted area, as three people have already been reported dead. The eastern areas of the Gulf of Mexico, where the hurricane swept through, have recorded temperatures of 30.5°C (87F) to 31°C (89F), several degrees above the average expected for that area, and contributing to a vast network of marine heatwaves that have covered nearly half of the world’s oceans this summer. This extreme oceanic heat extends over 50 metres (165ft) below the surface of the area and is enough alone to class Idalia as a devastating category 5 storm. 

This drastic increase in water temperature has recently been proven by scientists to be the cause of why Atlantic hurricanes are becoming stronger and intensifying over time due to the environmental impacts of climate change and global warming. Climate change is undoubtedly a cause of the strengthening of  hurricanes worldwide, as oceanic and atmospheric temperatures increase, yet climate change factors only exacerbate the origin of these destructive tropical storms, as a natural phenomenon of yearly conditions called the El Niño and La Niña, impact weather patterns and form hurricanes, as seen with Hurricane Idalia. El Niño is characterised by warmer-than-average oceanic temperatures, whereas La Niña results in lower-than-average temperatures. 2023 has followed an El Niño schedule, which has resulted in some of the highest water temperatures we have seen for years, further exacerbated by climate change. Fortunately, El Niño is more likely to result in weaker hurricanes than La Niña, as it increases wind shear, and doesn’t allow storms to gather momentum and intensity in the way that La Niña climate years do, however the sheer increase in oceanic temperature that this El Niño year has caused, coupled with the impacts of climate change, have resulted in a devastatingly damaging hurricane that has wreaked havoc on thousands of peoples lives. 

While hurricanes are a naturally occurring event as a result of the El Niño and La Niña yearly climate effect, the increased oceanic and atmospheric temperatures, as a result of climate change, have evidently worsened the global tropical storm situation, as we have seen unfold in Florida.