Thread: Hurricanes and typhoons on the Move! Tropical Storms Shift Toward Poles

Hurricanes on the Move! Tropical Storms Shift Toward Poles

By Becky Oskin, Senior Writer 4 hours ago

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View photo

Tropical storm tracks between 1985 and 2005.

Hurricanes and typhoons are migrating from the tropics toward the North and South poles, a new study finds.

In the past 30 years, the total number of storms has remained about the same in the tropics, said lead study author Jim Kossin, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center.

What has changed, however, is the number of successful storm births.

The new study found that tropical storms don't peak in the tropics as often as they did 30 years ago. Instead, more and more storms are reaching their maximum strength at higher latitudes, according to the report, published today (May 14) in the journal Nature. [Hurricanes from Above: See Nature's Biggest Storms]

"The tropics are becoming less hospitable for tropical cyclones, and the higher latitudes are becoming less hostile," Kossin told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

Tropical cyclones (the broad name for hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms) spin up over and over in the same regions — a group of storm nurseries ringing the tropics — because of favorable wind patterns and ocean temperatures.

Storm nurseries stir
Kossin and his co-authors think a simultaneous expansion in the planet's tropical belts underlies the overall change in storm intensity. The tropics have widened by about a degree in latitude each decade since 1979, according to separate studies by other research groups. The expansion also could have pushed the ideal storm-forming regions toward the North and South poles.

"There is certainly compelling evidence the two are linked, but we're not sure exactly how — that's what we want to find out," Kossin said. "This is a link that needs to be examined."

The expansion of the tropics has been linked to global warming and ozone loss. But scientists still hotly debate the impact of global warming on hurricanes. Storms could become more or less frequent, more intense or a combination of these changes, researchers say.

"This study establishes another link between global climate change and global tropical cyclone activity," said Hamish Ramsay, a climate scientist at Monash University in Australia who was not involved in the research. "It also raises a number of new questions, though."

The poleward trek doesn't necessarily mean that ferocious storms will be hitting the Atlantic coastline more often. As climate changes, fluctuating wind patterns could cause tropical storms to move toward or away from coastlines, for instance. And the study didn't examine landfall, where storms do the most damage.

Another confounding factor: The Atlantic Ocean storm nursery did not move north in the past 30 years, the researchers reported. Kossin said he suspects that regional effects in the Atlantic, such as aerosol pollution (tiny airborne particles), could be offsetting the overall tropical widening.

Heading north
By tracking where tropical cyclones hit at their strongest point, called peak intensity, the scientists discovered that storms are heading north and south.

This method avoids problems with comparing storms between different oceans, Kossin said. Determining peak intensity is relatively consistent among different storm-tracking centers, he said. Other criteria, such as when a tropical storm tips into hurricane strength, can vary from center to center, making comparisons difficult.

The push poleward averaged about 33 miles (53 kilometers) per decade in the Northern Hemisphere and 38 miles (61 km) per decade in the Southern Hemisphere — a total shift of about 1 degree latitude per decade. But some oceans saw a greater change than others. The biggest moves occurred in the Pacific Ocean and South Indian Ocean, but the peak intensity of Atlantic hurricanes and storms in the North Indian Ocean showed almost no change.

Kossin said the researchers don't yet know why some oceans nurtured higher-latitude storms and others saw little change.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

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http://news.yahoo.com/hurricanes-mov...171756771.html

http://m.accuweather.com/en/weather-...eason/20467725

"As the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season ends Nov. 30, it marks the season with the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Overall, 13 systems spun up in the basin since June 1, one more than average for the season.

Hurricanes, however, were in short supply. Only two, Ingrid and Humberto, formed this season, compared to the average of six.

Of those two, neither became major hurricanes. A major hurricane is defined as a storm that reaches Category 3 or higher. Typically, the Atlantic yields three major hurricanes per season. "




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Hurricanes and typhoons are migrating from the tropics toward the North and South poles, a new study finds.

In the past 30 years, the total number of storms has remained about the same in the tropics, said lead study author Jim Kossin, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center.

What has changed, however, is the number of successful storm births.

The new study found that tropical storms don't peak in the tropics as often as they did 30 years ago. Instead, more and more storms are reaching their maximum strength at higher latitudes, according to the report, published today (May 14) in the journal Nature. [Hurricanes from Above: See Nature's Biggest Storms] . . .

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Hurricanes and typhoons are migrating from the tropics toward the North and South poles, a new study finds.

So what? A single study is merely a hypothesis, not scientific fact.

Since nobody lives at the North or South poles, the storms are no threat to life or property.

This story is just another tempest in a tea pot, stirred up by chicken little leftists.

It's just a statement that the storms seem to be moving to places they didn't used to be.

Why try to make a political event out of everything.

Some things JUST HAPPEN. And have nothing to do with politics.

Here is a REAL political event that people should be real upset about.

http://www.alipac.us/f12/tea-party-l...erhaul-302697/

NEVER FORGET - NEVER FORGIVE

Global warming/climate change activists have been claiming that ever more and greater storms will hit the USA, supposedly causing cataclysmic damage to coastal cities.

But they're now refuted by one of their own, who claims that major storms are moving AWAY from us!

Chicken little leftist hyperbole = monumental fail!

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CNN

Tropical cyclones packing more punch further from the equator


By By Will Dunham May 14, 2014 5:20 PM

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View photoCategory 5 Tropical Cyclone Ita is seen approaching the far north Queensland coast of Australia, in this …

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People in heavily populated Pacific and Indian Ocean coastal regions beyond the tropics should take heed, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday, because tropical cyclones increasingly are packing their biggest punch farther from the equator.

Over the past 30 years, the location where these powerful storms reach their maximum intensity has shifted away from the equator and toward the poles in both the northern and southern hemispheres at a rate of about 35 miles (56 km) per decade, they said. That amounts to half a degree of latitude per decade.

The trend may be linked to factors that have contributed to global climate change including human activities like the burning of fossils fuels, the researchers said.

The scientists documented the greatest migration in tropical cyclones in the northern and southern Pacific and south Indian Oceans. This march away from the equator was not seen in the Atlantic, although hurricanes have registered increases in average intensity due to factors that may be counteracting the poleward trend seen elsewhere, the researchers said.

The storms that menace coastal regions with damaging winds and flooding are known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, typhoons in the western Pacific and tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Southern Hemisphere.

The movement of maximum intensity means regions further north and south of the equator that have not dealt with many of these storms may now be in the crosshairs.

"We found that the tropics are becoming less hospitable to tropical cyclones and the higher latitudes are becoming less hostile," said Jim Kossin, an atmospheric research scientist with the National Climatic Data Center of the U.S. government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who led the study appearing in the journal Nature.

"So places in Japan and South Korea could find themselves at greater risk," Kossin said in a telephone interview. "Places in the southern Philippines might experience reduced risk."

As these storms creep into higher latitudes, some regions closer to the equator may experience reduced risk of being battered by them, the researchers said. On the other hand, these regions in the tropics that rely on rainfall spawned by these storms for fresh water resources may experience water shortages as the storms migrate away from them, they added.

Gabriel Vecchi, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, said the researchers could not say with certainty whether increases in greenhouse gases or stratospheric ozone depletion have caused the poleward movement. But Vecchi said the latitude of maximum intensity has moved toward the poles at roughly the same rate as an expansion of the Earth's tropics over the same period, and other studies have attributed the tropics' expansion to human activities.

The scientists tracked the trend using satellite and other data spanning from 1982 to 2012 collected by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. While the study documented the trend over a period of three decades using the data, it may very well have begun well before, Kossin said.

http://news.yahoo.com/tropical-cyclo...212046310.html