Reuters/NOAAFalse claims suggesting that Hurricane Milton was “manufactured” and that the weather in Florida was “controlled” have been circulating on social media.
There is no technology that allows humans to create and control hurricanes.
But on platforms like X and TikTok, posts alleging — without evidence — that the US government is secretly controlling the weather have been viewed millions of times.
Many were published by accounts known to spread conspiracy theories, as well as misinformation about Covid-19 or vaccines.
These users believed that Hurricane Milton, one of the most powerful hurricanes in recent US history, was deliberately created by the dark forces at the heart of US politics.
But they proposed several different explanations for how that was done.
Some users claim that weather manipulation techniques such as cloud seeding are to blame.
Cloud farming involves manipulating existing clouds to try to produce more rain, for example in countries with arid climates.
But the US Southeast was already battered by heavy rains from Hurricane Helene, which caused deadly flooding in several states two weeks ago.
“When we cloud seed, it’s because we don’t have enough aerosols or water vapor in the atmosphere to see condensation happen, so we’re trying to force it past the cloud seed,” said Jill Trepanier, a Louisiana state extreme weather expert. University.
“To the west of the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, that is not a problem. The world will make a storm of its own.”
Some users have accused “geoengineering” instead – a myriad of ways to manipulate the environment with the aim of mitigating the effects of climate change.
But no tools would allow humans to create or control storms like this.
“It’s impossible to use current knowledge and technology to use geoengineering to fix hurricanes,” said Suzana Camargo of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
Hurricanes are natural weather systems.
They usually begin in what is known as a heat wave – a low pressure area where thunderstorms and clouds form.
As strong winds push this system from Africa towards the Americas, warm, moist air rises from the warm Atlantic Ocean, and the cloud and wind system begins to rotate.
With enough energy from warm ocean waters, combined with suitable circulation patterns in the atmosphere, it may be able to strengthen into a full-blown hurricane.
Social media posts seen by BBC Verify wrongly suggest that storms like this one are being created for nefarious reasons, including trying to run into next month’s presidential election.
That assertion is false, but there is a human-made connection to how climate change is making these storms more powerful.
Climate change – caused by the release of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide from human activities – is not thought to be increasing the number of tropical cyclones around the world.
But rising temperatures make more powerful storms possible.
Warming oceans mean these storms can pack more energy, which can lead to higher wind speeds.
Hurricane Milton strengthened rapidly especially as it moved over the Gulf of Mexico, where ocean temperatures were about 1-2C warmer than average.
The maximum wind speed increased from 90mph (150km/h) to 175mph (280km/h) in just 12 hours on October 7, according to data from the National Hurricane Center.
For some social media users, this sudden change was seen as “evidence” to support their suggestions this was not a “natural” storm, but instead a man-made one.
But this trend is in line with expectations of storms that typically intensify quickly in tropical countries.
“As we warm the planet, we expect many impacts that could cause hurricanes to become more dangerous – including the ability to rapidly intensify in unnaturally warm ocean waters,” explains Andra Garner, an assistant professor at Rowan University in New Jersey. .
Hurricane Helene – which hit Florida two weeks ago – also quickly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico.
A new study released Wednesday found that extreme ocean temperatures above its channel are made hundreds of times more likely by human-caused warming.
“[Helene] it was more dangerous because of climate change,” explained Ben Clarke of the World Weather Attribution group, who led the study.
Besides strong winds, climate change is also affecting other hurricane hazards.
A warmer climate can hold more moisture – up to about 7% for every 1C of temperature increase. This means that the rain can be very heavy.
And sea levels around the world have been rising in recent decades, largely due to global warming. This makes it more likely that a given storm surge – the temporary rise in sea levels from storms – will lead to coastal flooding.
In Florida, the average sea level has has risen more than 18cm (7in) since 1970according to US government data.
For some of the users who are spreading conspiracy theories about Hurricane Milton, this is equivalent to “scare”. But the evidence suggests otherwise.
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