How climate change can make monsoon storms more powerful, dangerous and costly
SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) – When monsoon storms began to boil above Zion National Park, Angela Madsen-Glazier didn't think she would become a victim of severe weather. But minutes later, as flash floods ravaged nearby canyons, muddy torrents of water came for her family's home too. The basement filled with water, destroying everything in it.
"We helped put everything together [in the basement] and now, to see it gone, it's just devastating," she told ABC4.com.
Madsen-Glazier grew up in the home just a stone's throw from the park. She helped her family finish the basement when she was growing up. Monsoon storms were of course normal and routine then, but in today's world, warmed to extremes by the burning of fossil fuels, monsoon storms can be more powerful, dangerous and costly.
"Climate change is certainly pushing in a lot of different directions on Utah's summer season," explained Jon Meyer, assistant state climatologist at the Utah Climate Center. "We like to look at the different ingredients that go into the monsoon system to understand how each of those ingredients might be affected by a warming climate."
The monsoon
To understand climate's impact on summer storms in the Southwest, it's important to understand the North American monsoon. The phenomenon is a seasonal change in atmospheric circulation that happens as summer temperatures heat the land. As the summer warms, moisture moves in from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California. This produces thunderstorms and brings rainfall to the arid region. The monsoon is important, because it can bring states like Arizona and New Mexico half of the average annual precipitation. But researchers are detecting the impact of human-caused climate change on this seasonal cycle.
A changing monsoon?
Humidity and heat are the driving forces behind the monsoon. Storms need those ingredients to grow. But climate change is causing the oceans to warm, and the North Pacific Ocean has warmed faster than any other ocean basin since 2013. That means more water is evaporated into the atmosphere, forming plumes of humidity that juice the air like steroids and fuel stronger thunderstorms, like the ones that ravaged Madsen-Glazier's home in southern Utah.
"We see a shift in the historical collection of precipitation that we get during the monsoon season towards higher and higher ceilings of probable maximum conditions," explained Meyer. "Thunderstorms [now] have a longer season which means we have more rolls of the dice for those thunderstorms to be extreme."
The cost of stronger storms
As the likelihood of severe weather increases, so do the costs in lives and property. Many homeowners lack flood insurance, which means damage from flash floods isn't covered by a standard homeowner's insurance policy.
A 2024 report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office acknowledged this, finding that disasters attributable to climate change would strain insurance providers and put property owners at risk of being underinsured or having policies canceled as insurers leave the marketplace. The same study showed a significant increase in climate-related disasters costing at least $1 billion.
The effects of climate change aren't measured in dollars alone. Lives are impacted. In August, a powerful monsoon storm brought torrential rains to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. A powerful flood blasted through the canyon, sweeping away tourists. Dozens were plucked from the canyon by rescuers. At least two people were killed while others remained missing. Heat is by far the deadliest form of weather-related death and injury.
As our planet warms, heatwaves are becoming more common in the West and around the world. Tens of thousands of people died in Europe as climate-fueled heatwaves blanketed the continent this summer. Heatwave-related deaths are harder to pin down in the western United States, though significant heat events occurred in what scientists have determined to be the hottest summer on record.
For Angela Madsen-Glazier, the effects of more intense weather events aren't abstract. She's paying for them now as she recalls the moment she saw her flood-ravaged home.
"I was just shocked at how much water was coming out," she said.
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