Thunderstorms, Wind and Climate Change: Here’s What to Know

Shattered windows and caved-in walls. Toppled power lines and trees. The severe storms that swept through Houston and the Gulf Coast on Thursday left all the destructive traces of a hurricane, yet they didn’t blow in from the tropics.

Violent clusters of thunderstorms cause extensive damage across the United States each year, not just through rain and flooding, but also through hail, tornadoes and walls of blasting wind. Here’s what to know about such storms, and how they might be changing in our warming climate.

Global warming creates conditions more favorable to severe storms.

As the planet warms, severe storms of all kinds are likely to deliver even bigger payloads of rain. The reason: Warmer air holds more moisture, which effectively increases a storm’s capacity to carry precipitation.

Because the air can hold more moisture, that also means there is more water vapor in the sky that can condense into liquid, forming clouds. The heat energy released into the atmosphere by this condensation is what feeds thunderstorms. In short, more condensation, stronger storms.

Warming might also increase the amount of instability in the atmosphere, which provides more energy to lift moist air rapidly skyward during storms.