Tara Rudo
11/2/2012
The “superstorm”, Sandy caused major damage to much of the East Coast this past week, bringing up the question; is human induced climate change the cause of Sandy and will there be more storms like this in the future?” It will take scientists years to fully understand the impact of this storm, but many are already coming up with possible reasons why Sandy was much a devastating storm. Sandy began as a hurricane by drawing up much evaporation from the warm ocean surface. The surface temperatures are much higher in the western Atlantic which is one reason to explain the intensity of this storm. A second source of energy for the storm were the sharp differences in temperature and pressure that normally drive winter storms. This was seen as snow was dumped in many regions of the Northeast. Many people called Sandy a “hybrid” storm due to the fact that began as a hurricane and merged with a midlatitude storm which was seen in the western part of the United States. Mentioned earlier in my blogs, I talked about the dramatic loss of sea ice this year, and many scientists believe that this was a potential contributor to the track of Sandy. The loss of sea ice due to human induced climate change, altered the flow of the atmosphere enough to cause severe weather occur in the midlatitude regions of the world. Storm surge is one thing that will worsen with storms due to the increase in sea levels. This rise in sea levels is caused by the rapid Arctic ice melting and the fact that warm water expands just as warm air does. Places like the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States are predicted to suffer from coastal flooding and eventually begin to sink. Many people are saying that hurricanes are going to become more common in the future due to global warming but computer model actually predict that hurricane systems will become less common but the intensity of those storm will be greater.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment