Climate change turns Cyclone Fani so severe

The cyclone Fani was fuelled by available heat in Bay of Bengal. Warming seas have increased the potential energy available to the passing storms, effectively increasing the power ceiling or speed limit for the cyclone, revealed Global Strategic Communications Council release.
Water in the Bay of Bengal turned unusually warm as Cyclone Fani was forming, by more than 1°C above the long-term average, revealed the NASA’s sea surface temperature map.These higher sea-surface temperatures increased the energy available to the storm. Globally, ocean temperatures have increased dramatically as a result of climate change.
Dr Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University said, “Fani is just the latest reminder of the heightened threat that millions of people around the world face from the combination of rising seas and more intense hurricanes and typhoons. That threat will only rise if we continue to warm the planet by burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon into the atmosphere.”
Climate change affects hurricane activity and amplifies the damages in several ways including -- increasing the rainfall that drops during the storm and increasing sea surface temperatures which in turn raise the maximum potential energy that a storm can reach, besides elevating storm surge, via sea level rise, which extends the storm's reach along low-lying areas.
Extreme precipitation increases unusually warm seas and a warmer atmosphere is helping supercharge the rains delivered by cyclones like Fani and amplify local flash flooding. As the global average temperature increases, so too does the ability of the atmosphere to hold and dump more water when it rains.
Atmospheric water vapor has been increasing, and the observed increases have been studied and formally attributed to global warming. An increase in rainfall rates is one of the more confident predictions of the effects of climate change on tropical cyclones. Five attribution studies found that global warming added to the deluge of rainfall dumped by Hurricane Harvey, which hit the southern US in 2017.
The most important impact of tropical cyclones in coastal regions is storm surge, which accounted for 49 percent of storm-related fatalities between 1963 and 2012. Increases in storm surge related to climate change can be due to rising seas, increasing size, and increasing storm wind speeds. Climate change has already contributed about 19cm to global sea level rise, and this has dramatically amplified the impact of cyclones by increasing baseline elevations for waves and storm surge.
A small vertical increase in sea level can translate into a very large increase in horizontal reach by storm surge depending upon local topography.
These sea surface temperature maps are based on observations by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The satellite measures the temperature of the top millimeter of the ocean surface. In this map, the coolest waters appear in blue (approximately -2 degrees Celsius), and the warmest temperatures appear in pink-yellow (35 degrees Celsius). Landmasses and the large area of sea ice around Antarctica appear in shades of gray, indicating no data were collected.
Sea surface temperature is the temperature of the top millimeter of the ocean's surface. Sea surface temperatures influence weather, including hurricanes, as well as plant and animal life in the ocean. Warm ocean waters help form clouds and affect weather patterns. The sea's surface temperature is also correlated to the availability of tiny ocean plants, called phytoplankton. For all of these reasons scientists monitor the sea's surface temperature. These maps show satellite measurements of the sea's surface temperature for a given day, or for a span of days.