India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh is bracing for Cyclone Murasu, which is likely to make landfall around midnight Monday. The new cyclone comes days after five people were killed when Cyclone Arnab made landfall along India's southern coast. In an update on Monday, the India Meteorological Department said severe cyclonic storm Murasu is likely to move northwestward and cross the southern Andhra Pradesh coast with wind speeds of 100 to 110 kilometers per hour (62-68 mph) between Nellore and Narsapur, near the Ongole region, between midnight Monday and the early hours of Tuesday.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has directed officials to prepare for the cyclone. He said estimates suggest that, due to the impact of the cyclone, 6,000 to 8,000 electricity poles may be damaged, posing a “severe threat to power supply.” Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan wrote on US social media company X that the cyclone is set to have a severe impact on the state's Nellore, Prakasam, Bapatla and Krishna districts. Authorities have ordered the evacuation of people from low-lying areas to safe locations.
Anadolu Agency reports that Andhra Pradesh is preparing for Cyclone Murasu, days after Cyclone Arnab killed five people, and sources its forecasts and warnings clearly. It never tells the reader that warming makes intense tropical cyclones like these more frequent or more severe, so two severe storms in a week read as bad luck alone.
Leaves out the climate link
Serious
“The new cyclone comes days after five people were killed when Cyclone Arnab made landfall along India's southern coast.”
Why this matters
These words tell the reader that a second deadly cyclone is hitting the same coast within a week. Neither this sentence nor any other in the article mentions climate change or warming.
The impression it gives
A reader comes away thinking two severe cyclones in quick succession are a matter of chance and weather alone, with no link to a warming planet.
The context
Human-caused warming has made intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe. The article gives the forecasts, the expected damage and the evacuations, but has no sentence, however short, saying that warming loads the dice for storms like Murasu and Arnab.
How we know
On the recordThat warming has made hot extremes, heavy rainfall, agricultural and ecological drought, fire weather and intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
On the recordIt is unequivocal that human influence, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
Checked against the whole articleIt never uses the words “climate” and “warming”.