Are the storms this year more devastating than previous years?

The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season has arrived, early storms may be a sign that this year's storm will be much stronger.

Last year, Hurricane Harvey hit the southern state of Texas, causing serious flooding in the city of Houston. Following that, Typhoon Maria became the 10th strongest storm in Atlantic history, it devastated Puerto Rico and many other islands in the Caribbean.

Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA) has a forecast for the hurricane season, and this forecast for 2018 identifies the possibility that up to 75% of storm activity this year will be at medium level. average and above average. 70% of the likelihood of having 10 to 16 tropical storms is named and has approximately 63km / h or more wind. Among them, about 5 to 9 strong storms will become storms, and from 1 to 4 storms will become super typhoon (level 3 and stronger).

So what exactly will this year's storm season look like? Will the storms become stronger, more and more devastating as a result of climate change? Can we better forecast the location and time of storms? Below is the statement of Denise Chow - MIT Professor of Atmospheric Science (MIT) - about this season's hurricane season.

Time of forecasting hurricane season

Forecasters rely on forecasting documents as well as scientific knowledge of Atlantic climate patterns. They pay special attention to the appearance or absence of (periodic warming of the sea surface). By May, forecasters were able to predict whether El Nino would be at the end of the summer or early in the fall (the temperature of the sea temperature was lower than normal in the cycle). These two phenomena affect storms, namely El Nino will eliminate storms in the Atlantic Ocean.

The forecaster also tracks other types of seasonal forecasts, for example, the water temperature will be higher or lower than the average, whether the Atlantic Ocean will have wind breaks or not.

Since 1995, the Atlantic storm has become stronger and stronger.

Today the water in the Atlantic is warmer than in the 80s of the last century. The cause may be due to global warming, but basically in the atmosphere today there is less sulfide aerosols (sulphate aerosol) than at the time.

Burning fossil fuels and burning / or forest fires results in atmospheric particles that reflect sunlight to keep the surface of our planet cool, which is now lost. In the late 1980s, these elements began to fade due to the Air Purification Act (USA) and similar actions in Europe and elsewhere in the world. These aerosols are harmful to health, but on the other hand cleaning them has side effects: when the Earth is no longer cool, the oceans start to warm up, and thus facilitate storms. return and intensity increases gradually.

Impact of global warming on storms

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is conducting an assessment of the impact on storms. One of the evaluation results that were highly consensus among scientists was that each typhoon brought an abundant amount of precipitation. The cause is very simple, the warmer atmosphere contains more water vapor. We have absolutely the basis to confirm that there will be many storms like Typhoon Harvey that have caused severe flooding.

There is no need to argue that the sea level is rising and it will almost certainly continue. The most devastating of the major storms was the storm, which was the cause of the flood in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the New York flood in Super Typhoon Sanday. Even if the storms do not change, the storm waves are still higher, stronger due to sea level rise, and become much more dangerous.

Another evaluation is also strongly supported by the scientific community, that is, we will witness storms much stronger. The explanation for this is the theory of maximum speed limit, when the entire climate system warms, the speed limit also increases.

There are still many unpredictable possibilities

Despite the evidence, the intensity of the hurricane season is pretty much convincing, but not without other possibilities. One of those problems is that we know that the field of paleontology (climate research of previous historical periods) shows that the climate system can change dramatically in ways that tissues Today's research image cannot be predicted and we still cannot understand why these changes occurred.

When it comes to global warming, the ability of the current climate system to suddenly turn to a completely different state still worries scientists. We have no way of knowing whether that sudden change will happen again, or if we can predict it, but only know that it happened in the past and we don't know. nothing more.

What is the sudden change of the climate system?

In the middle of the ice age, there were 1,000 years of sudden heat rise and then decreased again. The ice and snow suddenly dissipated in the ice age but the phenomenon lasted geologically. And we have absolutely no knowledge of that phenomenon.

In the past there were many other phenomena. Over 50 million years ago, in a period of our planet was extremely warm and there was no snow and ice, except maybe at some very high peaks. The temperature then suddenly skyrocketed and then fell very quickly. It is known as the Thuy Tan Antiquity (EPTM) period. We do not know why it happened, so we cannot rely on what to expect in the future.

Another phenomenon that happened in the 50s also caused scientists a headache. May be temporarily called a tropical weakening phenomenon in the Gulf of West Mexico. The night before a light windstorm began its manifestation, it had to land on land two days later, but only the next morning it became a super typhoon (level 3). That is storm Audrey. People don't remember much about it because it has been a long time, but it killed 600 people. The forecasters then completely gave up. People do not have time to evacuate. It was a terrible case, and Professor Denise Chow wrote in a study paper last year that global warming is potentially potentially leading to similar extreme events.