Climate change is in large parts responsible for this storm, says prof Kathleen Treseder, from the University of California, Irvine’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department.

It increases the frequency and intensity of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which leads to warmer waters in the Pacific Ocean and ultimately generates suitable conditions for these storms.

“This is a 100 year storm and we’re getting a lot of 100 year events here,” Treseder says, adding that more events of this scope are to be expected in coming years.

“Whenever we have an extreme event like this now I tell myself this is not gonna be a one-off, likely we are gonna have more and it may even be worse,” she says.

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