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ENGLISH 101 – Climate Change and Multimedia
Danial Arslan
How is global warming affecting the activity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and the impact they
cause?
If you were to pick up the newspaper or turn on the television on the last week of October, you
would have been found headlines such as these:
‘Hurricane Sandy tears through Jamaica and Cuba’ – The Telegraph
‘Hurricane Sandy leaves Cuba's 2nd largest city without power 4 days later’ – CBS News
‘Wrath of the Gods’ – India Abroad
During this time, the entire world watched in utter shock and disbelief. The hurricane ravaged city
after city, continuously re-intensifying, as it moved northwards. Meanwhile in New York the
attitude of many of people was almost cavalier. Mayor Bloomberg asked people to stay inside and
“read a good book,” as the storm passed. Upon asking one New Yorker on the preparations they
had made for the storm they replied, “We have a lot of tea lights!” People in New York generally
ignored the warnings. This was chiefly because of the fact that New York was not used to
experiencing hurricanes in the past and so many believed that the warnings were a gross
exaggeration for what was to come. A few days later these were the headlines:
‘A powerless New York During Hurricane Sandy’ – New York Magazine
‘Over a dozen dead, over 7 million without power as Sandy pummels the East Coast’ – Fox News
The hurricane destroyed power lines, ripped through the roofs of houses and razed trees to the
ground. The New York Stock Exchange was forced to close for two days, something which had
not happened since the Great Blizzard in 1888. Lower Manhattan and New Jersey were submerged
due to storm surges and torrential rain. A fire broke out in Queens which augmented the damage
which the hurricane brought. In the United States, Sandy took the lives of a total of 160 peoples.
Sandy had left meteorologists confounded as they came up with witty names such as ‘Frakenstorm’
for the hurricane. The hurricane had formed over the Caribbean Sea. At the time many had
predicted that the hurricane would not move higher than Florida. Yet due to the unusually warm
sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean, during the end of October (more than 3 degrees
Celsius than usual), the hurricane not only moved further north than predicted but it also gained
strength so that it was considered a category 1 hurricane just before it made landfall in the North
eastern seaboard.
However, why were the ocean temperatures at this time so unusually warm? The answer - global
warming. Global warming was the chief reason of Sandy’s unusual trajectory. It was also
responsible for the impact that the hurricane ended up making. Furthermore, climate change will
cause more hurricanes such as Sandy to occur. Places such as New York will become increasingly
susceptible to such storms in the future. But before we delve further we must first define what
climate, hurricanes and global warming is.
Climate is an amalgamation of average weather conditions which exist in an area over a long
period of time, at least 30 years. Due to various natural processes and events, the world’s climate
has always gone through a constant metamorphosis - from periods of global warming to periods
of global cooling. These variations would occur over prolonged periods of time (thousands of
years).
However, due to recent human activity, we have started to see a rapid change in our global climate.
This is causing concern amongst the general public as well as the members of the scientific
community. This sudden spike in average world temperatures, sea levels, greenhouse gas
concentration accompanied by the drop in ice levels on our planet, has collectively come to be
known as global warming.
Hurricanes, on the other hand form when the air above the sea surface is heated up by the sun,
causing it to move up and thus create an area of low pressure. This area of low pressure then causes
air from higher altitudes to sink down and displace the air moving up. This cool air heats up next
to the sea surface and the process repeats itself. Due to the earth’s rotation, the warm air moves up
in a series of rotating bands and as it moves up it condenses to from clouds. The center of this
circular rotation is an area free of clouds where the cool air sinks to the bottom. This is known as
the ‘eye’ of a storm. These tropical storms are distinctly outlined as hurricanes if the winds of the
rotating storm reach up to or more than speeds of 74 miles per hour.
Hurricanes usually bring in torrential rains and storm surges, which often cause flooding.
Furthermore, they are also responsible for destroying infrastructure and vegetation due to the high
wind speeds. They rely heavily on the energy provided by the warm ocean and as soon as they
make landfall they start to dissipate.
In the past decades there has been an undeniable increase in greenhouse gases (mainly carbon
dioxide) in the stratosphere. These greenhouse gases allow short wave electromagnetic radiation
(UV light) to pass through it. As a result, the sun’s rays are not obstructed when they enter the
earth. However, they absorb long wave, infra-red radiation which is reflected by the earth’s
surface. By doing so they create a blanket, which prevents heat from being lost into space.
Therefore, there is a buildup of heat which is why the global average temperatures on earth are
increasing. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the
global temperature has been increasing by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the 1945. This
is also causing the sea surface temperatures to increase and according to EPA there has been a 1.4
degrees’ Fahrenheit rise from 1880 to 2015. The heat causes more water to evaporate and as a
result the air above seas is more humid which makes it easier for the systems, responsible to create
storms and hurricanes, to start in motion.
Furthermore, since the average temperatures of the oceans are increasing, the potential area over
the Atlantic over which hurricanes can occur and can re-intensify has extended from the originally
equatorial and tropical regions, towards the poles. This can also explain why hurricane Sandy was
able to reach as high up north as it did.
This has also resulted in new hurricane prone regions such as Brazil, which suffered from
Hurricane Catarina in 2004 – the first ever hurricane in history to make landfall in the country.
Consequently, this extension means that the Western coast of Europe has also become susceptible
to hurricanes. On October 2014 for example, Hurricane Gonzalo made landfall in Wales with
winds up to a 110 mph, causing extensive damage in the region and its effects being felt as far as
Munich. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predicting that the global
temperatures might rise between 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, the
frequency of storms in the north, south and east of the Atlantic should increase along with the
intensity of storms which occur in the Atlantic Ocean in general.
However, in spite of what many climatologists predict should happen, based on many climate
models such as CMPI5, many detractors claim that this trends seen on computer screens has not
been actually observed in reality. This is in fact because of the hurricane drought which the Atlantic
Ocean has gone through in the previous decade. Hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean undergoes
this constant fluctuation with periods of high intensity followed by periods of low intensity and it
is an err to simply use the previous ten years as an indication of the average hurricane activity that
can be expected in a warming earth.
Many researchers even draw attention to the fact that although the Atlantic Ocean has experienced
a period of low hurricane activity, areas such as Taiwan and China have seen ever more intense
hurricanes, for example super typhoon Nepartak. Hawaii, which had never experiences a major
tropical cyclone in the past due to its geographical location, has not only experienced cyclones in
this decade but is now considered an area which could be extremely vulnerable to future
hurricanes.
Additionally, if the Atlantic Ocean is going through a period of low hurricane activity, with
hurricanes like Sandy and Gonzalo being produces, one can only imagine the frequency and
intensity of hurricanes that are yet to come in the corresponding active season.
Another point that is reiterated in the media is that global warming will cause an increase in wind
shear. This basically means that the conditions for the development of hurricanes could become
less favorable in the Caribbean. Although this is a valid point, yet, the past has shown us that strong
hurricanes can still form despite high wind shear, provided that the ocean surface temperatures are
warm enough. For example, Hurricane Sandy was created during a time of high wind shear –
another reason why forecasters were so stumped when Sandy developed into a category 3
hurricane. As the water temperatures will continue to increase over future decades, this increase
in wind shear may not have any affect at all in thwarting the expansion of hurricanes.
On a separate note, one of the major pollutants in the atmosphere, apart from greenhouse gases is
aerosol droplets. These are minute particles which already exist in the atmosphere naturally in the
form of volcanic ash or desert dust. Yet, due to the use of motor vehicles, and sprays containing
aerosol, the concentrations of these particles has increased in the stratosphere. Aerosols in the
atmosphere, tend to absorb and scatter the incoming solar radiation, therefore producing haze like
weather conditions. This scattering, reduced the amount of radiation which reaches the surface of
the earth. Ergo, this pollutant is in fact responsible for global cooling.
Having said that, countries all over the world are desperately trying to reduce the production of
aerosols, in an effort to reduce air pollution, in the form of haze or smog, above cities. This
implementation of air quality acts in various developed countries is decreasing the overall global
cooling and hence accelerating the rate at which the earth heats up due to greenhouse gases.
This excess heat is absorbed by oceans and is responsible for melting the Arctic and Antarctic ice
caps is in effect increasing sea levels. Globally sea levels have risen by 8 inches in the last century
and are forecasted to increase by a foot per century. This can in turn indirectly amplify the damages
which hurricanes cause.
An increase in sea level puts the current low lying coastal areas in jeopardy because they are at a
risk of flooding via sea surges. During a hurricane, gallons of water are dumped into the sea by the
system via precipitation. Moreover, the high wind speeds cause the waves to increase in height.
As a result, coastal areas are even more vulnerable to storm surges and coastal flooding is even
more likely. During, Hurricane Sandy and Katrina, the floods caused by storm surges did not only
delay the efforts of rescue teams but they also increase the costs incurred due to hurricane damages.
Furthermore, these flash floods also resulted in casualties. Therefore, global warming will indeed
cause these surges to be more frequent and more intense.
We need to start taking steps now to prepare ourselves for the future. The Netherlands, for
example, is creating higher dykes to protect itself from hurricanes, and such dykes need to also be
built by other countries. Levees need to be made taller to stop higher waves and surges. The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reduced the number of active buoys
employed in the Atlantic, to gauge hurricane development, due to budget cuts, when in fact we
should be developing the technology we use to record hurricane activity and increasing
surveillance of the Atlantic.
The government has set up hurricane insurance so that people can claim money to rebuild houses
if damaged due to cyclones. However, this has resulted in people building their houses in the same
area as before, only for it to be demolished again by another hurricane. The government instead,
must offer incentives to people to move further inland. This will also reduce the huge drain on
finances which are used in rebuilding houses year after year in the same areas.
As individuals, we must act on hurricane warnings immediately and take them seriously. Residents
in low lying areas should evacuate immediately before a hurricane makes landfall instead of
locking themselves inside. Stocking up on “tea lights” should not be how one prepares for a
hurricane! We should educate ourselves about the precautions to take when a hurricane warning is
put into place.
However, we can not only focus on curbing the effects of hurricanes. We must also try to eliminate
our contribution to global warming. We need to reduce our carbon footprint, and only once we
successfully tackle this problem can we actually effectively protect ourselves from future intense
hurricanes. As Kerry A. Emanuel, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
said in regards to the ferocity of future hurricanes, “Climate change just makes it worse. It sets up
for a string of Katrinas and Sandys as far as the eye can see.”
Throughout the world, researchers and climatologists are conducting various experiments and
running numerous climate models. Although the results of each model might vary but a general
trend can be observed. Despite the exact locations where hurricanes are projected to increase or
decrease, the general trend is that the hurricanes produced in the future will be much more intense
that the ones we struggle to protect ourselves from today. According to scientists at the Beijing
Normal University, “for every 1.8ºF (1ºC) rise of the Earth's temperature, the number of hurricanes
in the Atlantic that are as strong or stronger than Hurricane Katrina will increase twofold to
sevenfold.”1
Concurrently, a group researchers have used the climate model CMIP3 to identify the future
activity of hurricanes in the Atlantic. They concluded that, “the model projects nearly a doubling
of the frequency of category 4 and 5 storms by the end of the 21st century.”2 Yet, despite the
warnings echoed by the scientific community, there is little that is actually being done to prepare
for the mega storms that are to come. This could be because there hasn’t been a recent intense
hurricane in the United States. This has caused the general public alongside the government to
become complacent. As Dr. Robert E. Hart of the University of Florida says, “Memory fades about
the prior events, and more people have never experienced one than before.”
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Footnotes:
1.
Quote taken from Stone, Daniel. "Rising Temperatures May Cause More Katrinas."
National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
2.
Quote taken from Bender, Morris A., et al. "Modeled Impact of Anthropogenic Warming
on the Frequency of Intense Atlantic Hurricanes." Science 327.5964 (2010): 454-8. ProQuest.
Web. 20 Sep. 2016.