Three tropical cyclones are swirling in the South Pacific
Three tropical cyclones are spinning in the South Pacific, an occurrence that scientists say is unusual.
Three tropical cyclones are spinning in the South Pacific, an occurrence that scientists say is unusual.
Environment
Feb 26, 2025
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Record-breaking floods across north Queensland have now turned deadly, with one woman drowning while being rescued on Sunday morning. And the floodwaters are still rising, with rain set to continue.
Environment
Feb 3, 2025
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Rapid Intensification (RI) of tropical cyclones (TCs), defined as an intensity increase of at least 13 m/s within 24 hours, remains one of the most challenging phenomena to forecast because of its unpredictable and destructive ...
Environment
Jan 23, 2025
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An understanding of the relationship between severe weather and power outages in our changing climate will be critical for hazard response plans, according to a study led by a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School ...
Environment
Jan 22, 2025
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Near-inertial internal waves (NIWs) are crucial energy sources for deep-sea mixing, but the origins of deep NIWs have remained largely unknown. A research team led by Prof. Wang Fan from the Institute of Oceanology of the ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 20, 2025
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As climate change drives increasingly severe hurricanes, U.S. coastal communities are bearing the brunt of mounting losses. With regulations failing to curb the damage, homeowners have become the front line of defense—but ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 16, 2025
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Residents of the French territory of Mayotte braced Sunday for a storm expected to bring strong winds and flash floods less than a month after the Indian Ocean archipelago was devastated by a deadly cyclone.
Environment
Jan 12, 2025
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2024 was another year of record-breaking temperatures, driving the global water cycle to new climate extremes and contributing to ferocious floods and crippling droughts, a new report led by The Australian National University ...
Environment
Jan 6, 2025
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Earth reached its warmest year on record in 2024, according to data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, Europe's leading environmental monitoring program.
Earth Sciences
Jan 3, 2025
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People around the world suffered an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat this year because of human-caused climate change, according to a group of scientists who also said that climate change worsened much of the world's ...
Environment
Dec 29, 2024
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A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones feed on heat released when moist air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor contained in the moist air. They are fueled by a different heat mechanism than other cyclonic windstorms such as nor'easters, European windstorms, and polar lows, leading to their classification as "warm core" storm systems. Tropical cyclones originate in the doldrums near the equator, about 10° away from it.
The term "tropical" refers to both the geographic origin of these systems, which form almost exclusively in tropical regions of the globe, and their formation in maritime tropical air masses. The term "cyclone" refers to such storms' cyclonic nature, with counterclockwise rotation in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise rotation in the Southern Hemisphere. Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by names such as hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, and simply cyclone.
While tropical cyclones can produce extremely powerful winds and torrential rain, they are also able to produce high waves and damaging storm surge as well as spawning tornadoes. They develop over large bodies of warm water, and lose their strength if they move over land. This is why coastal regions can receive significant damage from a tropical cyclone, while inland regions are relatively safe from receiving strong winds. Heavy rains, however, can produce significant flooding inland, and storm surges can produce extensive coastal flooding up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) from the coastline. Although their effects on human populations can be devastating, tropical cyclones can also relieve drought conditions. They also carry heat and energy away from the tropics and transport it toward temperate latitudes, which makes them an important part of the global atmospheric circulation mechanism. As a result, tropical cyclones help to maintain equilibrium in the Earth's troposphere, and to maintain a relatively stable and warm temperature worldwide.
Many tropical cyclones develop when the atmospheric conditions around a weak disturbance in the atmosphere are favorable. The background environment is modulated by climatological cycles and patterns such as the Madden-Julian oscillation, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, and the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Mode. Others form when other types of cyclones acquire tropical characteristics. Tropical systems are then moved by steering winds in the troposphere; if the conditions remain favorable, the tropical disturbance intensifies, and can even develop an eye. On the other end of the spectrum, if the conditions around the system deteriorate or the tropical cyclone makes landfall, the system weakens and eventually dissipates. It is not possible to artificially induce the dissipation of these systems with current technology.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA