Hurricanes

I'm discussing this because of the recent spate of very powerful hurricanes, including Harvey, Irma and Maria.

Basically, hurricanes come under the category of tropical cyclones, which infers that hurricanes are much more prevalent in the tropical regions of our planet. Hurricanes are huge rotating storm systems that have a very low-pressure center. They typically have very strong winds, thunderstorms and cause a lot of damage. Hurricanes and typhoons are the result of living on a spinning ocean planet with a substantial atmosphere. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is an example of a cyclone storm, a storm that has lasted for hundreds of years.

Hurricanes typically form over a large body of warm water. Warm water causes evaporation from the ocean surface. This water vapor condenses into clouds because as one goes up in the atmosphere, air temperature drops. Conservation of angular momentum, which is caused by the Earth's rotation, imparts the rotation to the forming hurricane. The warm ocean imparts energy to this rotating storm system and makes it grow in both size and ferocity. This rotation causes the center of the rotation to create an eye where the air falls and becomes a very low pressure quite area. Think of water going down a drain, which spins around in a direction according to whether it's happening in the Northern hemisphere or Southern hemisphere. This same Coriolis effect causes hurricanes to spin.

All of these effects are the result of well-known physical principles. In fact, there are mathematical equations that express the effects. I won't go into the math, but suffice it to say, the mechanism is well understood.

Hurricanes in the Northern Atlantic form near the equator near Africa and progress across the Atlantic to play havoc to the Caribbean region before smashing into Mexico and the Southern parts of the United States, including Texas. Sometimes hurricanes roam as far up as New York and even New England. Hurricanes usually strike in the North Atlantic during the summer from June to November. Typically, 12 hurricanes form, but not all of them strike land. The number of hurricanes varies from year to year. El Nino and La Nina, which are higher than normal and lower than normal Pacific Ocean temperatures, respectively, also affect the hurricane season in the North Atlantic.

Similar typhoon storms strike in the Pacific and Indian oceans and cause similar havoc.

The question is: is climate change causing more of these storms?

The answer is no. The number of storms is not increasing. What is increasing is the severity of these storms. The reason is simple. Global warming is causing the oceans to increase in temperature, and temperature is what's causing the storms to increase in size and ferocity. It's like adding fuel to a fire.

My take on this is that if this temperature rise continues, some locations on planet Earth will become uninhabitable, or at least not very economically viable. Hurricanes are usually accompanied by storm surges, which cause seas to rise many feet, causing extensive flooding. These surges will make low-lying islands and coastal areas impossible to live on.

Thanks for reading.