A New Zealand-born world expert at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research says the US is not doing enough to plan for hurricanes and is suffering the consequences.
More than 200 people were killed when three category four hurricanes - Harvey, Irma and Maria - made landfall on US territory in the space of a month this year.
President Donald Trump has made the US the only country to reject the Paris Climate Accord and is now proposing slashing funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency which is responsible for disaster recovery and for helping states prepare for extreme weather events.
Kevin Tremberth, a world expert in climate analysis at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, told 1 NEWS not enough is being done.
"Building resilience and making preparations and planning for it - we're not doing enough of either of those. The third option then is to suffer the consequences," he said.
Mr Tremberth said he believes climate change is making these weather events more extreme.
"Hurricanes are natural phenomenon. Climate change does not cause hurricanes to occur. So the hurricanes that occur are then super-sized by the environment in which they're occurring, and that environment relates to especially the ocean temperatures," he said.
In the Atlantic this year, record highs are being recorded, with sea temperatures over 30 degrees celsius in the Gulf of Mexico.
"It makes the storms more intense, it makes them larger in size and it makes them longer lived," Mr Tremberth said.
High temperatures also make the hurricanes potentially much more destructive, like in Houston, where Harvey's size meant it was able to continue dumping rain on the already deluged city for days after making landfall.
"It still had a reach out over the Gulf, so that there was still moisture flowing into the storm and of course that moisture was flowing right over Houston and produced over 60 inches of rain in places," he said.
And, as was seen in Puerto Rico and Cuba, the devastation from storm surges is also intensifying as the sea level rises.
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