When Hurricane Ida made landfall on Sunday in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, the Category 4 storm’s wind speeds clocked in at 150 miles per hour. The gales ripped roofs off structures, toppled transmission lines, caused mass power outages, and pushed an over 12-foot storm surge onto land, flooding wide swaths of coastal Mississippi and Louisiana. Preliminary data suggests it was the fifth stronges

But there is another factor that made Ida particularly devastating: Sea levels in parts of the Gulf Coast have risen nearly two feet since 1950, due to both climate change and land subsidence. And scientists note the higher the water level, the more is pushed onto land and the further inland it reaches during a hurricane. t hurricane on record to hit the continental U.S., based on wind speed.

“Ida is an unnatural disaster, at least in part,” Jason West, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health tweeted on Sunday. “Climate change makes it stronger, sea level rise makes it more damaging.”

The Gulf Coast has some of the fastest sea-level rise in the country, increasing 0.3 inches per year. Part of this rapid rise is due to climate change: As oceans warm, water is expanding. Freshwater entering the oceans as glaciers and ice caps melt are also contributing to the increase. The other part of the Gulf’s rapid sea-level rise is due to land subsidence, which happens both naturally and from human activities. Along the Gulf Coast, engineering decisions to drain swampland for development, extract groundwater and oil from the ground, cut canals through the bayous for shipping, and historic flood control measures have resulted in severe land subsidence issues, with places like New Orleans and Houston sinking at a rate of 2 inches per year.

Read the full article about sea-level rise and Hurricane Ida by Jena Brooker at Grist.