Tropical cyclones - Articles - Zimbio

Northern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity Lowest in 30 years

Wed, 6 Nov 2008 03:09:23 GMT

posted by Moverm60

The function of a hurricane is to dissipate heat and keep the earth’s temperature within norms. Florida State Univ. has the latest data on global and northern hemisphere tropical cyclones and the date shows
northern hemisphere tropical cyclone activity is the lowest in 30 years.

Click image to enlarge.

Wouldn’t you think with all the man-made gasses being ejected into the atmosphere we’d have global warming and we’d see an increase instead of a decrease. In fact the decline started in 2004-2005.

I see no evidence to worry about (gasp) global warming, but instead global cooling!

Tags: Global Warming, Weather //
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Tropical Rental Homes

Sun, 17 Nov 2008 09:30:14 GMT

posted by yuppmarks

Posted by searchpros 32 minutes ago (http://www.opbali.com)
Category: General | Tags: uluwata bali properties

Outrigger Panorama Bali, Resort and Spa offers you the perfect combination of lifestyle, service and investment considerations.

AIR Unveils Cyclone Model for Mexico

Sun, 28 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

posted by davet
AIR Worldwide Corporation (AIR) announced the availability of the AIR tropical cyclone model for Mexico.

The new probabilistic model will reportedly help the industry better manage hurricane and tropical cyclone risk in the growing Latin American insurance market. The unique feature of the AIR tropical cyclone model for Mexico is that it estimates insured losses from wind and flood to buildings, contents, and business interruption.

On average, Mexico experiences almost two hurricane landfalls per year, which is similar to the United States,” said Dr. Tim Doggett, Senior Research Scientist at AIR Worldwide. “The most intense storms have the potential to cause significant insured losses when they make landfall in a highly developed area on Mexico’s coastline, as demonstrated by the $2 billion loss from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and the $1 billion loss from Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, if it were to recur today.”

While damage from tropical cyclones is often thought of as being caused primarily by wind, this is not always the case in Mexico. Tropical cyclones in this region—even those with relatively low wind speeds—can be accompanied by significant flooding, which is typically covered under both residential and commercial insurance policies. Since precipitation from tropical cyclones can penetrate hundreds of kilometers inland, weak storms that impact vast areas and generate substantial rainfall have the potential to produce significant insured losses.

Mexico’s coastal mountains have a considerable impact on both the meteorological and hydrological aspects of landfalling cyclones. Mountains act as barriers to the flow of storms and impact the rate at which a landfalling storm will dissipate. Additionally, as winds from the cyclone are forced over the mountains, the lifting of the air increases the rainfall that the storm produces in that area.

The AIR model’s flood component incorporates high resolution elevation and soil data to simulate tropical cyclone induced flooding. The flood depth or accumulated run-off is estimated based on total precipitation produced by a simulated storm, the topography, elevation and the ability of local soils to absorb water.

The model includes a catalog containing more than 50,000 potential landfalling tropical cyclones, which range from tropical storms to intense hurricanes. Additionally, the model covers both the Atlantic and East Pacific basins and incorporates the negative correlation in tropical cyclone formation in the East Pacific and North Atlantic basins caused by the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

To reflect the vulnerability of the Mexican building stock to wind and flood, AIR engineers developed separate damage functions for a wide range of occupancies and construction types, as well as contents and time element coverage. AIR’s damage functions also account for storm duration to reflect the increased damage that results from prolonged exposure to wind and rainfall.

The AIR tropical cyclone model for Mexico is available immediately in AIR’s CLASIC/2™ and CATRADER® catastrophe risk modeling applications.

Global warming will boost cyclone power

Tue, 3 Sep 2008 23:24:00 GMT

posted by news9
x Global warming is likely to boost the power of the strongest tropical cyclones, a study released Wednesday says.

An additional one degree Celsius in sea temperatures in tropical regions where cyclones breed could lead to a nearly one-third rise in the number of the most powerful storms, it says.

"As the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind," say authors of the paper, released by London weekly Nature.

Previous research, based on observations over the past 30 years, has already suggested that hurricanes - as cyclones in the Atlantic are known - have become more intense as a result of warmer seas.

But the observational record for the Atlantic is more detailed and goes back farther than for storms in the Indian Ocean, known as cyclones, or those in the Pacific, which are called typhoons.

Seeking to fill in the blanks, a trio of US scientists crunched satellite data for the period of 1981-2006 in all of these storm basins.

They totted up the number of storms and the maximum wind speeds attained during each event, and compared this with sea-surface temperatures.

Over the 25 years under scrutiny, they saw no increase in the overall number of storms.

But there was a significant increase in wind speed among the most powerful storms, or those in roughly the top quarter for intensity.

Hurricanes, Cyclones and Typhoons

Sun, 8 Sep 2008 03:57:54 GMT

posted by wingover

HURRICANE: a tropical cyclone with winds of 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour or greater that occurs especially in the western Atlantic, that is usually accompanied by rain, thunder, and lightning, and that sometimes moves into temperate latitudes.

CYCLONE: a storm or system of winds that rotates about a center of low atmospheric pressure, advances at a speed of 20 to 30 miles (about 30 to 50 kilometers) an hour, and often brings heavy rain

TYPHOON: a hurricane occurring especially in the region of the Philippines or the China sea.