Where are the Hurricanes? | Green Energy News

August 15, 2010 – Vol.15 No.22

WHERE ARE THE HURRICANES?
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

Don’t be surprised if in a few years time you read this headline news: “Global Warming Spares Florida from Hurricanes” (This would be the exact flip-flop of what we’ve been hearing for years, that hurricanes would increase in number or in ferocity under a warming planet scenario.)

At the beginning of this 2010 Atlantic hurricane season forecasters were saying that conditions were ripe this year for a near repeat of the 2005 season which brought hurricanes Katrina and Rita to US shores. That record-breaking season began on June 8 and lasted until into early 2006. There were 31 total tropical depressions, 28 total tropical storms, 15 of those storms became hurricanes with 7 of them major.

Yet if this year is to be a near match for 2005 you’d think that by now, mid-August, there would be more than just five tropical depressions including one hurricane and two other named storms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) still says that an active hurricane season is possible. We’ll see. True, the season doesn’t peak for another month (mid-September), but still you’d think there should be more activity in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. By mid-August in 2005 there had been 10 tropical depressions including five named tropical storms, and four hurricanes.

What gives?

The formation of hurricanes is extremely complex. Scientists are still writing the recipe nature uses to cook these perfect storms. Beginning soon, in a research program called Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP), NASA will begin flights into tropical storms as they are forming to make unprecedented measurements in an attempt to better understand why tropical cyclones develop.

Among the questions they will be seeking to answer are “What role does dust from the Sahara play in hurricane formation?” and “Do widespread environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, precipitation and clouds lead to cyclone formation, or are smaller-scale interactions between some of these same elements the cause?”

A guess is that the hot dry dusty air from the Sahara Desert in Africa nips the bud of hurricane formation. Millions of tons of Saharan dust can cross the Atlantic every year. Airborne dust can make the trip in is little as five days.

But why now? Why hasn’t Saharan dust been a major inhibitor of hurricane formation before? Answer: The Sahara Desert is moving south at a rate as much as 30 miles per year. The farther south the desert moves, the more the dusty Saharan winds blow into the region where tropical waves develop. The ultra-dry dusty air sucks the life out of newly born storms more now than in the past: A tipping point has been reached where the dust suddenly becomes a player in hurricane formation.

Is the southern expansion of the Sahara because of global warming? Could be. It could also be that poor land and resource use in the region such as cutting down trees for firewood or poor farming practices are allowing the desert to grow. Or it could be a combination of planet warming and poor farming/resource use.

All of this requires complex scientific research that could take years. GRIP will likely be one of many research projects regarding hurricanes.

Eventually, the findings of hurricane formation research could lead to game-changing results. For instance, if it turns out that the threat of hurricanes on the US East and Gulf Coasts is diminished under a warming planet scenario, then real estate values could skyrocket on the US coastlines, particularly Florida, as people and insurance companies lose their fear of the mighty storms. (A rising ocean would still be a threat.) On the downside, tropical storms bring often needed water to the Eastern US. Fewer storms might mean more drought.

The power of dust, and its ability to suck moisture out of the air, caught my attention a few years ago reading Timothy Egan’s “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.” Poor farming practices in the drought prone area covering 100,000,000 acres centered on the panhandles of Texas, Oklahoma is considered the cause of the disaster. Dust from the Bowl traveled all the way to East Coast, even the nation’s capitol, in the 1930’s at the bottom of the Great Depression.

The Sahara Desert, the size of the contiguous United States, is a vastly larger region than the Dust Bowl was. Dust from the Sahara has been tracked westward all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and Texas. With such an impact on areas so far away, combined with the moisture absorbent quality of dust, it could very well be that the Sahara and its move southward near the birthplace of tropical storms is affecting the formation of hurricanes. Whether man has anything to do with this will be answered another day.

Links:

NASA Grip Hurricane Mission
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/missions/grip/main/index.html