A new study provides evidence for the influence of warming oceans on increased hurricane intensity. Credit: NOAA New warnings of a global warming-driven increase in the most deadly and destructive tropical storms are especially scary in regions already hit hard, including the Southeastern U.S., where Hurricane Michael damaged 60,000 homes in 2018 , and the Caribbean, where Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and crippled the island’s infrastructure . There’s more of the same ahead, recent federal research suggests. One study found that the chances of major tropical storms forming increased globally by 6 percent in each of the last four decades. A second shows the biggest increase in frequency in already storm-battered areas, including Florida, the Bahamas, eastern Africa, Japan, China and the Philippine Islands. The results bolster “projections of increased (tropical cyclone) intensity under continued warming,” the authors of the first study wrote. Those […]