Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as the strongest storm to ever hit the Caribbean country. CBS News' Jason Allen has more on the storm and David Schechter reports on the influence of climate change on larger hurricanes.

Kingston

Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica as the most powerful storm ever recorded in the country, bringing winds up to 185 miles per hour and severe flooding. Authorities issued warnings of structural failure and urged residents to seek shelter, while aid teams prepared for recovery efforts.

Experts attribute the hurricane's rapid intensification to climate change, noting that warmer ocean waters provide more energy for such storms. A recent study by Climate Central found that the conditions leading to Melissa's strength are significantly more likely due to human-caused climate change, making extreme hurricanes more intense and increasing rainfall.

How climate change impacts larger hurricanes like Melissa

As we've been reporting, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica today as the strongest storm to ever hit the Caribbean country. CBS News correspondent Jason Allen has more. Hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica with winds up to 185 miles per hour and heavy rains. Today will be very difficult for tens of thousands, if not millions of people in Jamaica. Roads will be tested, floodwaters will rise, isolation will become a harsh reality for many. The National Hurricane Center issued a dire warning. Within the Iowa, total structural failure is likely. This video U.S. Air Force hurricane hunters took inside the storm shows a massive wall of clouds. Jamaica, this is not the time to be brave. Don't bet against Melissa. For days, government officials pleaded with people to find safe shelter outside of the strength of these winds. There are aid teams that are on the ground here to assess the damage once the storm clears and agencies that are ready to fly in supplies. Jamaicans living in the U.S. are watching the storm closely. Minneapolis restaurant owner Tommy Bevis says he's been in constant communication with family and friends back home. We're doing a good job stocking up on food and we're just hoping that they have enough. And then the aftermath of the hurricane, with the flooding, with the devastation, we're hoping that they will have the resources for the immediate recovery as well as the long-term rebuilding. Melissa's next target, Cuba. Authorities there say they've already evacuated more than half a million people from low-lying areas. Jason Allen, CBS News, Kingston, Jamaica. CBS News National Environmental Correspondent David Schechter joins us now. David, always good to have you in studio. How does human-caused climate change affect large hurricanes? I'm glad you asked that question. It's, you know, the atmospheric science of this is pretty basic. Hurricanes are powered by warm water and warm air. And the oceans have absorbed 90% of the additional heat that we have essentially made over time. So the oceans are warmer, but it's slow because they're so deep. You know, we're talking about by degrees, like two and a half degrees Celsius. So you have warmer water, warmer air, and these hurricanes are now more powerful because they have more fuel. It's basic. So let's look at Melissa in particular. How do we know and do we know yet that climate change is impacting and contributing to its strength? There has been sort of a snap study on this by a group called Climate Central. They do a lot of modeling over what the influence of climate change is over a specific event. And they can do that pretty much now in real time. And so we have this extreme rapid intensification that happened. The hurricane picked up 70 miles per hour in speed over a 24-hour period. And so this slow drift over warm water, they did the numbers. Those conditions are 700 times more likely because of climate change. Wow. So the fingerprints of that intensification is, you know, very clearly climate change is playing a factor here. It doesn't make hurricanes, but it can make them more intense, more rainfall, more inland rain. Okay. David Schechter, thank you for joining us on this. Thank you.

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