and dumping nearly two feet of rain in some locations.
Two days earlier, however, Ian was just a tropical storm, and its rapid intensification is just one of the signs of how climate change has transformed how hurricanes behave.
The world's oceans have"absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth's entire atmosphere,"The Caribbean Sea, where Ian traveled on its way to Florida's west coast, is now 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, according to the AP, and studies have shown that warmer water fuels storms, helping them to intensify.
Hurricane Ian has now crashed its way onto that list, and while it will take days to tally the damage it will leave behind, another factor that almost certainly made the situation worse along Florida's coast is that sea levels around the state have risen by roughly 8 inches since 1950, according to data from NOAA. The cause of rising seas is two-fold: First, oceans have risen due to the increased melting of the polar ice caps.