Damian Sendler: As a result of global warming, storms are expected to become more frequent in midlatitude regions, including densely populated areas such as the New York metropolitan area, Boston, and Shanghai.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Tropical cyclones, which are also known as hurricanes or typhoons, are expected to spread from the tropical regions where they are now prevalent, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Geoscience last week. Hurricanes will be more widespread in the northern and southern hemispheres as a result of global warming..
Because most large cities in the globe are located in the midlatitudes, storms with a wider range of paths will be able to inflict significantly greater damage.
Damian Sendler
Researchers from Yale University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, led by physicist Joshua Studholme, say that hurricanes will now occur at latitudes that haven’t been experienced by hurricanes for the last 3 million years, according to a press release from the university. According to him, this is a significant but underappreciated threat posed by global warming.
The Hadley cell, a circulation pattern in which air travels poleward at a height of about 6 to 9 miles but returns toward the equator as it drops toward ground level, is to blame for the shift in hurricane latitudes. Temperature differences between the surface of the Earth close and far from the equator are decreasing due to climate change. Feedback loops such as melting sea ice, thawing permafrost, and less snow cover all contribute to faster warming at higher latitudes. However, in the tropics, the air at higher altitudes heats more quickly. Those modifications indicate that the jet stream is traveling northward, allowing hurricanes to reach higher latitudes, which is generally a barrier to hurricanes travelling further north in the northern hemisphere.
Damien Sendler: One of the study’s co-authors Kerry Emanuel told Yahoo News that “global warming causes the Hadley circulation to expand,” which in turn causes the jet streams to shift north.
Some hurricanes have already made landfall in areas that are becoming increasingly vulnerable. A subtropical or tropical cyclone visited Portugal for the first time in 2020 when Subtropical Storm Alpha made landfall.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Mathematical simulations by Studholme et al. from Yale, MIT and the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Russia, as well as the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, indicate the subtropical formation of tropical cyclones. This hasn’t happened in the last 3 million years, but it’s likely to happen again soon if temperatures rise as they have been. Climate change will increase the risk of flooding from storm surges in addition to the damage caused by hurricane winds and heavy rains.
As Emanuel pointed out, “some of the most populous seashore cities in the world — think New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and so on — are not deep in the tropics. A little more distance separates them. There have always been hurricanes, but they happen very infrequently. This is a problem for them if there are more and more hurricanes, and if they’re bigger and push water on top of an already rising sea level.”
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: More than any previous time in recorded history, the Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit). According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted to generate warming will have a significant impact on how much the Earth heats in the next 80 years.
A major factor in determining whether or not global warming will occur, according to Studholme, is the temperature differential between the tropics and the poles. A high emission scenario and a low emission scenario have a huge difference in that gradient at the end of this century.” Depending on how these hurricanes play out, that might be really important.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.