The number of big storms in the future will decrease, but their strength will increase due to global warming.
Rescue workers drag a person swept away in the flood on Portuguese island of Madeira on January 21.The big storm the previous day carried a great amount of rain and caused flooding, landslides in many areas on this famous tourist island.At least 42 people are confirmed dead.Photo: AP.
The relationship between global warming and storms has become a hotly debated topic among scientists after a report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology appeared in Nature in the summer of 2005. According to this report, the level of damage caused by storms has increased since the mid-70s and will continue to increase in the future. Many scientists support the article, but a small part of the experts disagree.
AP said that the World Meteorological Organization has set up a committee of 10 experts to study both storms and climate change. Among the committee's scientists are those who support and oppose the hypothesis that the storm will intensify because of the greenhouse effect. The results were published on the website of Nature Geoscience.
'We understand more about storms and climate change through the research process over the past two years , ' said Chris Landsea, a member of the committee. Landsea is a leading scientist in storms from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The study reports a lot of predictions about tropical storms around the world from now until the end of the 21st century. Those predictions show more bad news than good news. In general, storm intensity - measured by wind speed - will increase from 2 to 11%. In return the number of storms will decrease by 6-34%. It is worth noting that the number of storms with low and medium intensity will decrease, while strong storms will increase due to global warming.
Kerry Emanuel - a meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA - said that an 11% increase in wind speed means a 60% increase in damage caused by storms.
'The storms will carry more rain. The higher the rainfall, the greater the level of storm damage , 'said meteorologist Tom Knutson of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
