Tropical weather
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The National Hurricane Center’s final report on Hurricane Ian was released earlier this week. It shows that for a short time before landfall it reached category 5, one of just a few hurricanes to do so. In the past, conventional wisdom has said that hurricanes generally weaken as they get close to land due to…
Posted in: Tropical weather -
A recent report published in the scientific journal Nature and described here by BBC indicates that as the globe continues to warm and the Antarctic Ice Sheet melts rapidly, the infusion of fresh meltwater into the ocean could cause large changes in the large-scale ocean circulation that transports heat, salt, and nutrients around the world.…
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Here in the Southeast US, we aren’t really thinking about tropical storms at this time of year, but in other parts of the world, they can occur in almost any month of the year. This year, Tropical Cyclone Freddy started as a tropical storm in the eastern Indian Ocean on February 6 and moved westward…
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A study published in February 2023 in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate quantified a 50-year warming trend in the surface water of the Gulf of Mexico. The rate is twice the rate that the global ocean is warming. This is important to us in the Southeast because of the economic and environmental impacts…
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If you are a citrus grower in Florida that has been affected by the wind and rain of Hurricane Ian, you might be interested in hearing about this new study that is being undertaken by scientists at the University of Florida. Over the next year, they will be looking at the continuing impacts of Hurricane…
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According to a recent article by Seth Borenstein of Associated Press, a recent study of hurricane frequency by Princeton scientists shows that the chances of two hurricanes hitting a single location in a short period of time has increased from once every few decades to once every two or three years. This would have big…
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Here is an interesting column about changes to hurricanes over time as the climate gets warmer. The columnist notes that most hurricane names are outdated and that the definitions of hurricanes and tropical storms that are linked to wind speeds don’t mean much when the biggest damage from many storms is due to water, not…