By: Scott Ivan Fulguirinas
(Four Tropical Cyclones Across the Entire Pacific Ocean: from nasa.gov)
Trying to isolate the human influence from everything else that is going on can be really hard, especially for tropical cyclones. They’re super complex and the quality of the historical data we have for them isn’t great. We do have physics, though.
Tropical Cyclones are driven by the transfer of heat from the sea to the air through evaporation. The storm’s maximum possible wind speed, or its potential intensity, depends in part on how warm the ocean is.
(An illustration on how tropical cyclones are formed :from atmos.uiuc.edu)
And of course, we’re warming the ocean. So researchers expect intense tropical cyclones to become frequent if we continue to warm the planet. The cyclones of the future will be wetter. Just imagine how many more longer class suspensions it will take if this goes on.
And that trend of wetter storms isn’t just for tropical cyclones. Heavy precipitation events from other types of storms have been increasing. Warmer air can take up more water before it dumps it back down on us.
All of this means climate change worsens floods, but it’s not our destiny to hurt ourselves like this. It depends on what we choose to do now.
Climate Change 