The National Hurricane Center has announced that Tropical Storm Katia has developed into the Atlantic basin's third active hurricane.
Katia is in the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the coastline south of Texas to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Hurricane Katia is a Category 1 storm has maximum sustained winds of 75 mph.
Tropical Storm Jose developed into a hurricane only hours earlier as Category 5 storm Hurricane Irma made landfall in the Caribbean.
Former deputy undersecretary of defense Sherri Goodman says, "We are not yet clear-eyed about the threat of extreme weather in the era of climate change."
"Even as emergency management officials in Texas scramble to rebuild after Hurricane Harvey, they acknowledge that they were unprepared for the scope and strength of the storm, which was made more severe by the effects of climate change," Goodman noted in a CNBC op-ed. "The widespread destruction in Houston shows that the changing climate is a direct threat to our citizens' security right here at home."
"Too many elected officials still deny that warming ocean and atmospheric temperatures are changing the strength and severity of storms. As a nation we have not even begun to adequately prepare for storms like Hurricane Harvey and Irma, and that leaves our citizens vulnerable," Goodman explained. "As we are tragically learning from Hurricane Harvey (and should have already learned from Superstorm Sandy and Katrina), extreme weather poses a massive national security risk not just overseas, but also here at home."
"We ignore these risks at our peril. Not only our national security, but our homeland, is at greater risk until we take the climate threat seriously," Goodman concluded.
Here is a curation of the latest hurricane news:
