"In August, 2005, Anand Irimpen, a cardiologist and a professor at Tulane University, evacuated New Orleans during the approach of Hurricane Katrina. He and his family watched it make landfall from a hotel room in Dallas. "The storm passed by and I was ready to go home," Irimpen told me. "But then my wife said, 'The levees broke. We can't go back.'" The damage to New Orleans lingered; they ended up staying in Dallas for months."
"In an age of climate change, we can expect more storms like Katrina. Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm that plowed through the Caribbean in late October, was as powerful as any Atlantic hurricane on record, with sustained winds of a hundred and eighty-five miles per hour and one of the lowest atmospheric pressures ever measured. It was fuelled by abnormally warm ocean temperatures."
In August 2005 a New Orleans cardiologist evacuated during Hurricane Katrina and stayed away after levee failures. When his hospital reopened in February 2006 clinicians recorded a threefold increase in heart attacks compared with pre-Katrina years, and the elevated rate persisted years later. The cardiology team collected two years of post-storm data to quantify the rise. Climate change is increasing the likelihood of similarly powerful storms. Hurricane Melissa reached Category 5 intensity with sustained winds of 185 mph and extremely low pressure, fueled by unusually warm ocean temperatures. Severe storms also cause infrastructure collapse, as seen in Haiti where a main highway disintegrated.
Read at The New Yorker
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