Name: Jamaica: Melissa aftermath reveals climate changes true cost
Uploaded: 2025-11-07T08:49:10.656Z
Duration: 2 min 16 s
Description: Hurricane Melissa caused unprecedented destruction in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica. New research suggests that climate change exacerbated the third most intense Atlantic storm on record.

Hurricane Melissa caused unprecedented destruction in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica. New research suggests that climate change exacerbated the third most intense Atlantic storm on record.

Kingston

Hurricane Melissa has caused widespread destruction across Jamaica, resulting in extensive flooding, infrastructure damage, and property loss. The United Nations Development Programme representative described it as the worst climate disaster in Jamaica's history, with recovery expected to take months or years and damages estimated at 30% of the country's GDP.

Researchers from Imperial College London have linked the hurricane's intensity to climate change, noting that such severe wind speeds and environmental conditions are now significantly more likely due to rising ocean temperatures. The aftermath has left Jamaica facing not only immediate recovery challenges but also the longer-term consequences of global inaction on climate change.

Jamaica: Melissa aftermath reveals climate change's true cost

The savage force of Hurricane Melissa has now passed, but evidence of the devastation the storm brought to Jamaica is everywhere. Flooding, extensive damage to road infrastructure and widespread property destruction means the people on the Caribbean island will spend months if not years trying to put their lives back together. The United Nations Development Programme representative for Jamaica says the hurricane was the worst climate disaster in the island's history and the costs are equivalent to 30% of its GDP. He said the magnitude can be measured in the volumes of debris the storm left in its wake. This includes 2 million metric tons of building debris from the buildings that have been damaged, 1.3 million tons of vegetation debris, unimaginable destruction of forests and landscape in Western Jamaica, 1.4 million metric tons of personal property debris. This shows the key challenges and level of destruction including impacts on roads and other infrastructure. As Jamaica counts the cost, early analysis suggests Hurricane Melissa provides more evidence that the human-made climate crisis is exacerbating natural disasters. The researchers at Imperial College London studied how the hurricane's most powerful effects, intense rainfall and high winds, were fuelled by ocean temperatures raised by climate change. We found that the wind speeds that we saw in Hurricane Melissa are about five times more likely than they would have been without climate change and that the underlying environmental conditions that can lead to a hurricane like this, so that's the sea surface temperatures and the atmospheric conditions, were about six times more likely than they would have been without climate change. It adds a bitter note to the despair already felt here, counting the cost not just of the hurricane but of the longer term inaction on climate change.

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