A team of researchers from Florida State University, coordinated by Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences Jim Elsner, has discovered that fewer and fewer hurricanes are formed as a result of climate change. However, when they do occur, they are more powerful and devastating than normal.
According to Elsner in a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change , rising temperatures in the oceans have a notable effect on the way cyclones and tropical storms form and discharge their energy. Hurricanes take place when the sea temperature exceeds 26ºC ; under these conditions, and as the warm water evaporates, a storm can gain the energy necessary to become one of them. A higher temperature translates into a higher energy level, which ends up affecting the speed of the wind.
Now, these experts have observed that in the last three decades, the speed of these types of storms has increased on average almost 5 kilometers per hour , although there have been fewer than they would have occurred if the global temperature had remained constant. In fact, the United States Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has calculated that it is 0.68 ° C above the 20th century average. “In essence, it is an exchange between frequency and intensity,” says Elsner.
This scientist believes that temperatures can be used as an indicator to predict what we may find in the storm season. “In a warmer year, there will be fewer tropical cyclones, but they will be more violent, just the opposite of what will happen in colder ones,” says Nam-Young Kang, co-author of the study, who directs the National Typhoon Center, in South Korea. Thus, for this year, meteorologists estimate that six hurricanes will form, one of them of great intensity, while the average of the last thirty years has been nine; three of them more powerful.
