The arrival of storms like Hurricane Lee this weekend could become more common in the region as the planet gets warmer and warmer, including in places such as the Gulf of Maine, scientist said.

Lee remained a Category 1 hurricane late Friday night with sustained winds of 128 kilometers per hour. The storm was forecast to brush New England, the U.S. northeastern region, before making landfall later Saturday in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. States of emergency were declared for Massachusetts and Maine in the U.S.

One recent study found climate change could result in hurricanes expanding their reach more often into mid-latitude regions, which include New York, Boston and even Beijing.

The study says the factors include warmer sea surface temperatures in these regions and the shifting and weakening of the jet streams, which are the strong bands of air currents encircling the planet in both hemispheres.

"These jet stream changes combined with the warmer ocean temperatures are making the mid-latitude more favorable to hurricanes,” said Joshua Studholme, a Yale University physicist and the study's lead author. "Ultimately meaning that these regions are likely to see more storm formation, intensification and persistence."

Another recent study simulated tropical cyclone tracks from pre-industrial times, modern times and a future with higher emissions. It found hurricanes will move north and east in the Atlantic. The research also found hurricanes would track closer to the coasts including Boston, New York and Norfolk, Virginia, and more likely form along the southeast coast in the U.S.

"We also found that hurricanes are more likely to move most slowly when they're traveling along the U.S. East Coast, which causes their impacts to last longer and increase that duration of dealing with winds and storm surge," said Andra Garner, lead study author and an assistant professor of environmental science at Rowan University in New Jersey.

Garner noted the study results included New York City and Boston.

Kerry Emanuel, a professor emeritus of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has long studied the physics of hurricanes, said parts of Maine will see more frequent hurricanes and heavier rains with each storm.

"We expect to see more hurricanes than we've seen in the last few decades. They should produce more rain and more wind," said Emanuel, who lives in Maine. "We certainly have seen up here an increase in the destructiveness of winter storms, which is a very different beast. I would say the bulk of the evidence, the weight of the evidence, is that we’ll see more rain and more wind from these storms."

One reason for the trend is the region's warming waters.

The Gulf of Maine, for example, is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. In 2022, the gulf recorded the second-warmest year on record. The average sea surface temperature was 12 degrees Celsius, more than 3.7 degrees above the 40-year average, scientists said.

"Certainly, when we think about storms forming and traveling at more northern latitudes, sea surface temperature comes into play a lot because hurricanes need those really warm ocean waters to fuel them," Garner said. "And if those warm ocean waters exist at higher latitudes than they used to, it makes it more possible for storms to move in those areas."