FEMA boss says deadly tornadoes are going to be new normal because of climate change
The top US emergency management official has claimed that more powerful, destructive, and deadly storms will be the 'new normal' due to , following 's devastating tornadoes. 'This is going to be our new normal,' Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told Sunday before heading to Kentucky to assess the damage and help coordinate the federal response. 'The effects that we're seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation,' the FEMA chief added. Warm weather from a Nina pattern was a crucial ingredient in the tornado outbreak that decimated western Kentucky on Friday, but whether climate change is a factor is not quite as clear, meteorologists say. Nevertheless, Criswell warned of the rising challenge that the United States faces in addressing such severe weather events. 'We're seeing more intense storms, severe weather, whether it's hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires,' she said on ABC's 'This Week.' 'The focus I'm going to have is, how do we start to reduce the impacts of these events?' Friday's storms are now the deadliest tornado strike in Kentucky's history, with 80 confirmed dead in that state. Meanwhile, the multi-state death toll stands at 94 and is expected to rise. Tornadoes in December are unusual, but not unheard of, and Friday's storms struck further east than the traditional 'tornado alley' in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas where twisters are most common. Additionally, the ferocity and path-length of Friday night's tornadoes likely put them in a category of their own, meteorologists say. One of the twisters - if it is confirmed to have been just one and not several separate tornadoes - likely broke a nearly 100-year-old record for how long a tornado stayed on the ground in a path of destruction, experts said. President Joe Biden said Saturday the storm system was likely 'one of the largest tornado outbreaks in our history.' And while he stressed that the impact of climate change on these particular storms was not yet clear, 'we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming -- everything.' Scientists have stopped short of conclusive determinations that more violent storms are the result of climate change, but they agree that evidence is building. One paper published recently by scientific association AGU says its analysis 'suggests increasing global temperature will affect the occurrence of conditions favorable to severe weather.' Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, tweeted Saturday in response to the study, saying that while the effect of climate change on severe weather like tornadoes is not well established, 'there is a growing body of research (including this late-breaking paper) suggesting that warming likely does increase such risks in many regions globally.' Scientists say figuring out how climate change is affecting the frequency of tornadoes is complicated and their understanding is still evolving. But they do say the atmospheric conditions that give rise to such outbreaks are intensifying in the winter as the planet warms. And tornado alley is shifting farther east away from the Kansas-Oklahoma area and into states where Friday's killers hit.