From the Heritage Foundation, I'm Michelle Cordero, and this is Heritage Explains.

Last week, as I drove to work, stuck in traffic and listening to the news, there was a lot of coverage on Hurricane Florence.

Podcasts that traveled back in time to Hurricane Harvey, bringing up lessons about what we could learn moving forward. Morning updates on the force of the storm and amounts of

rain we should expect. Announcements on what citizens and affected areas should be doing to prepare

and protect themselves in their families and local businesses. But also, there was some straightforward matter-of-fact reporting

on how Hurricane Florence was happening because of climate change.

So this is a pretty good moment to pose a question.

What makes a hurricane especially strong?

And PR's Rebecca Herscher is here to answer that and more.

Good morning, Rebecca.

Good morning. What makes a strong hurricane? Heat, especially hot oceans. Yeah. So when the water in the oceans gets hotter, which is happening because of global warming, it's like fuel for a hurricane's engine.

It's spinning up, gaining strength. So You can think of it as a hot bath.

Florence is slowing down as a consequence to some degree, at least, from climate change.

There is evidence to support that storm systems, hurricanes are slowing down in the coastal

plain due to climate change. So that's one thing. Storms slow down, they produce more rainfall.

When water temperatures rise, and we see that with climate change, that also produces more

rainfall.

Air temperatures are higher, they can actually hold more water vapor, they drop more rain.

What we're seeing now with Florence, we have seen in the wildfires in California, in the

heat waves in Europe, and in the rise of the ocean and small islands around the world,

this is all part of the same issue. These are all symptoms of climate change that are happening

right now. Climate change has shifted these statistics. We're getting much more frequent and more

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