Is climate change to blame for Hurricane Melissa?

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

What’s been called the storm of the century - Hurricane Melissa – has barrelled through Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas over the past two days. Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading, explains whether Melissa was caused – or made worse - by human-made climate change.

As the H5N1 bird flu season picks up across British farms, virologist Ian Brown from the Pirbright Institute assesses its threat and turns our attention to a largely ignored strain of bird flu – H9N2 – which a recent study suggests is becoming adapted to human cells.

The interstellar comet 3I/Atlas has inspired some bizarre theories about alien life coming into our solar system. BBC science journalist Roland Pease, who has been watching these cosmic events and the pseudoscientific myths that follow in their wake for decades, gives us his take.

And mathematician Katie Steckles brings us her favourite finds from the world of science.

If you want to test your climate change knowledge, head to bbc.co.uk search for BBC Inside Science and follow the links to The Open University to take the quiz.

Presenter: Victoria Gill Producers: Ella Hubber, Jonathan Blackwell, Tim Dodd Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Hello, I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a psychologist, and in my new podcast, Complex, I'll be your guide
0:14.4	through all the information and misinformation that's out there about mental health.
0:19.0	I'm joined by expert guests covering topics from people-pleasing to perfectionism,
0:24.2	burnout to empathy, to find tangible advice so we can understand ourselves a little better.
0:30.5	Complex with me, Kimberly Wilson.
0:33.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.8	Hello, lovely curious-minded people.
0:38.1	Welcome to the Inside Science podcast, first broadcast on the 30th of October 2025.
0:43.5	I'm Victoria Gill.
0:45.1	And today we're going to dissect a strain of bird flu you might not have heard of and find out
0:49.9	why this one could be a candidate for a human pandemic.
0:53.3	And there's an interstellar visitor wandering through our solar system as I speak.
0:58.2	We will be debunking pseudo-scientific myths and revealing some real scientific wonder about Cometh three-eye Atlas.
1:06.1	And Katie Seckles is with me in the studio, mathematician, broadcaster, puzzle maker, friend of the program. Hello, Katie. Hello. Welcome. It's nice to have you here. You've been combing through some discoveries we should all know about this week, haven't you? What have you got for us? Well, there is a cryptographical puzzle. Okay. And some news on a breakthrough in that. A little bit about the maths behind animal patterns. Ah. And a scientific way to tell whether your food is going to be too spicy.
1:30.2	Food and animal print. Two of my favourite subjects. I'll look forward to that. Stick with us.
1:34.9	First though, we want to turn our attention to what's been called the Storm of the Century,
1:39.8	Hurricane Melissa. As it barreled through Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas this week, we saw people sharing
1:44.9	videos from Jamaica of roads turned into rivers, roofs ripped from buildings, and palm trees
1:50.5	tossed around like toothpicks.
1:55.0	It will take many days to assess the extent of the damage, especially in more remote communities
2:00.6	inland.
	...

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