Weak Tropical Cyclones Are Amplifying Due to Global Warming
A set of scientists at Fudan Univerity’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and CMA-FDU Joint Laboratory of Marine Metereology, collaborating with one associate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and another from the University of California San Diego, has discovered that weak tropical cyclones, likewise known as tropical storms, are becoming more potent due to climate change.
About tropical cyclones
In their article released in the journal Nature, the team explains their study of data from thousands of surface drifters over a 29-year time. Robert Korty, with Texas A&M University, has released a News & Views part in the exact same journal issue describing the ways ocean storms are gauged and the work done by the group on this recent effort.
Previous investigations propose that major cyclones and hurricanes have been expanding in dimension and strength in recent years because of climate change. In this new attempt, the scientists discovered evidence indicating that tinier storms are becoming stronger.
As the world gets warmer, so do the globe’s seas. The storms that form over warmer seas have more water and energy and are bigger than those of last decades. The previous study has involved using satellite imagery and direct observation by aircraft, which, the researchers mention, functions well for big storms. But for more smaller storms, such data can be inaccurate at best.
The methods for determining storm strength
For that reason, the scientists sought for other methods to determine smaller storm strength. They mentioned that investigators have deployed what are known as surface drifters over the last decades. These devices are like miniature buoys with sensors and are not tethered to the sea floor. The sensors aboard the drifters could calculate both wind and current speed, together with rainfall quantities, giving precise measurements of the severity of a cyclone or tropical storm.
The scientists gathered data from hundreds of the drifters deployed throughout the years 1991 to 2020 to develop simulations of storm strength in various parts of the world over time. They were able to see that the typical storm strength for category 1 tropical storms has been intensifying due to warmer sea conditions at a rate of around 1.8 meters per second every decade.
Read the original article on PHYS.
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