Reuters/NOAAFalse claims are spreading on social media suggesting that Hurricane Milton was “designed” and that Florida's weather is being “manipulated.”
There is no technology that allows humans to create and control hurricanes.
However, on platforms like X and TikTok, posts claiming – without evidence – that the US government secretly controls the weather have been viewed millions of times.
Many of them were posted on accounts known for spreading conspiracy theories as well as disinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines.
These users shared the belief that Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest storms in recent U.S. history, was intentionally created by mysterious forces at the heart of American politics.
However, they offered several different explanations for how this was allegedly done.
Some users claimed that weather manipulation techniques such as cloud seeding were to blame.
Cloud seeding involves manipulating existing clouds to produce more rain, for example in countries with arid climates.
However, the southeastern United States has already been hit by massive rainfall from Hurricane Helene, which caused deadly flooding in several states just two weeks ago.
“When we cloud seed, it's because there aren't enough aerosols or water vapor in the atmosphere for condensation to occur, so we try to push cloud seeding,” says Jill Trepanier, an extreme weather expert at Louisiana State University.
“Over the western Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, this is not a problem. The earth itself will create a hurricane.”
Other users instead blamed “geoengineering” – a wide range of methods of manipulating the environment to reduce the effects of climate change.
However, there are no tools that allow humans to create or control storms like this.
“There is no way to leverage current knowledge and technology to use geoengineering to modify hurricanes,” says Suzana Camargo of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
Hurricanes are natural weather systems.
They usually start as a so-called tropical wave – an area of low pressure where thunderstorms and clouds develop.
As strong winds push this system out of Africa towards the Americas, warm, moist air rises over the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the system of clouds and winds begins to swirl.
Given enough energy from warm ocean waters combined with favorable atmospheric circulation patterns, it could become a full hurricane.
Social media posts seen by BBC Verify wrongly suggest that hurricanes like this one happen for all the wrong reasons, including to influence next month's presidential election.
These claims are false, but there is a link to human activity due to the way climate change is causing these storms to become more intense overall.
Climate change – caused by human-led emissions of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide – is not believed to be causing an increase in the number of tropical storms around the world.
However, rising temperatures increase the likelihood of the strongest hurricanes.
Warmer seas mean these storms can absorb more energy, potentially leading to higher wind speeds.
Hurricane Milton strengthened particularly quickly as it moved over the Gulf of Mexico, where sea surface temperatures were approximately 1-2°C above average.
Peak sustained wind speeds increased from 90 miles per hour (150 km/h) Do 175 miles per hour (280 km/h) According to the National Hurricane Center, on October 7 in just 12 hours.
Some social media users saw the sudden change as “evidence” to support their suggestions that it was not a “natural” storm but man-made.
However, this trend fits with expectations that hurricanes will generally intensify faster in a warming world.
“As the planet warms, we anticipate many potential impacts from hurricanes that could make them more damaging, including the possibility of strengthening more quickly over unnaturally warm ocean waters,” explains Andra Garner, an assistant professor at Rowan University in New Jersey.
Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida about two weeks ago, also intensified rapidly over the Gulf of Mexico.
A new study released Wednesday found that exceptionally high sea surface temperatures along its track are hundreds of times more likely to be the result of human-caused warming.
“(Helene) has had much more devastating impacts due to climate change,” explains Ben Clarke of the group World Weather Attribution, which led the study.
In addition to typically stronger winds, climate change also affects other hurricane hazards.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture – up to about 7% for every 1°C increase in temperature. This means that rainfall may be more intense.
Global sea levels have been rising in recent decades, mainly due to global warming. This increases the likelihood that a given storm surge – a short-term rise in sea level resulting from storms – will lead to coastal flooding.
In Florida, the average sea level is has increased by more than 18 cm (7 in) since 1970– according to US government data.
For some users spreading conspiracy theories around Hurricane Milton, this also amounts to “scaremongering.” But the evidence suggests otherwise.
