When Hurricane Helene hit the south-eastern US in September 2024, almost 5 million homes and businesses across Florida, South Carolina and Georgia were plunged into darkness. Some residents were without power for weeks.
Such widespread blackouts are set to become more common as the world warms, according to new research that suggests that vast swathes of the US could become vulnerable to power outages from hurricanes.
When a hurricane hits, high winds and heavy rain can topple power lines and electricity poles, causing power outages. As climate change presses on, hurricanes are expected to become more frequent and intense, says at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington.
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Together with colleagues, Rice set out to investigate how changing hurricane patterns will affect the risk of power outages across the US by the end of the century. The team did this by using a digital tool to simulate power outages from almost 1 million hurricanes in current and future climate scenarios. 鈥淭hat enables us to create large ensembles of realistic tropical cyclone events, and then analyse the impacts of those events,鈥� says Rice.
The findings, presented this month at the in New Orleans, Louisiana, are striking. In a high-emissions scenario where average temperatures reach 4.3掳C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, coastal states including Rhode Island, Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Louisiana see their outage risk increase by more than 50 per cent. The southern tip of Florida sees its risk of power outages double.
In total, the study predicts an additional 53 million people per decade will be affected by power outages in this scenario, a 51 per cent increase. 鈥淲e found really quite severely increasing power outage risk across the entire domain we were looking at,鈥� says Rice.
While high winds can topple trees and power lines, rainfall is also a major factor in hurricane blackouts 鈥� heavy rain can destabilise tree roots and canopies, causing trees to topple. It can also topple electricity poles in the same way. A warmer atmosphere will increase the amount of rain dumped by hurricanes, says team member , also at PNNL, increasing the blackout risk.
鈥淪torms themselves are getting stronger, more intense,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen the intensity of the storm increases, it increases the efficiency with which it cycles the moisture. This adds on top of the increasing moisture already in the atmosphere.鈥� About one-fifth of the additional outage risk across the US is down to changes in future rainfall, says Balaguru.
However, the level of warming in this scenario is considered unlikely, with most models predicting a rise between 1.9 and 3.7掳C by 2100. The researchers are planning to re-run their experiment using a lower projected temperature rise, and to expand their analysis to hurricane-prone countries beyond the US.
The study didn鈥檛 account for changes in population, or local resilience measures that might protect an electricity grid from blackouts, such as reinforced transmission towers or underground cables. Nor did it consider how long power cuts would last for.
at the University of Washington in Seattle examining the role of different forms of extreme weather in causing power cuts across the US. She says hurricanes are the most likely type of extreme weather to cause a lengthy power cut. 鈥淲hen a county was hit by a tropical cyclone, 24 per cent of the time, a power outage lasting 8 hours or more occurred,鈥� she says.
鈥淧ower outages affect nearly every facet of our lives,鈥� she adds. 鈥淲hen a power outage lasts 8 or more hours, we expect indoor climate controls to begin failing, back-up batteries to die and communications to become difficult.鈥� The results of the PNNL study 鈥渁re not surprising鈥�, she says, especially given the high level of warming the team projected.
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