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Its the third of October 2002; and along the hurricane-prone coast of Louisiana people await Lili, as a hurricane, one of nature's most violent and devastating phenomenon.
The National Hurricane Centre reports: 
"LILI REMAINS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE; DEADLY 10 TO 20 FOOT STORM SURGE APPROACHING THE GULF COAST;
NOAA Warns Final Preparations to Protect Life and Property Should Be Rushed to Completion Now; Follow Advice from Local Emergency Managers".

Lili is not the first hurricane of this year. Actually last week its predecessor Isidore made  landfall at about the same place Lili is expected to. The city of New Orleans together with a large coastal area suffered from severe flooding. At the moment the mess isn't cleared away yet, but Lili certainly won't care about that.

What's a hurricane? 
A hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone, which is a generic term for a low pressure system that generally forms in the tropics. The cyclone is accompanied by thunderstorms and, in the Northern Hemisphere, a counter clockwise circulation of winds near the earth's surface.
Tropical cyclones with maximum sustained surface winds of less than 39 mph are called "tropical depressions". 
Once the tropical cyclone reaches winds of at least 39 mph they are typically called a "tropical storm" and assigned a name. 
If winds reach 74 mph, then they are called: a "hurricane" in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Northeast Pacific Ocean east of the dateline, or the South Pacific Ocean east of 160E. In the Northwest Pacific Ocean west of the dateline the cyclone is called "typhoon"
.

How and where do these monsters develop?

A tropical cyclone needs several ingredients and conditions to develop.

  1. Warm ocean waters (of at least 80°F) throughout a sufficient depth (unknown how deep, but at least on the order of 150 ft). Warm waters are necessary to fuel the heat engine of the tropical cyclone.
  2. An unsettled atmosphere which cools fast enough with height. In such an atmosphere thunderstorm easily develop and it's the thunderstorm activity which allows the heat stored in the ocean waters to be liberated for the tropical cyclone development.
  3. A minimum distance of at least 500 km [300 mi] from the equator. This has to do with the pressure the turning earth brings to bear upon the atmosphere. For the birth of a tropical cyclone, there is a requirement for certain amounts of this pressure.
  4. Tropical cyclones cannot be generated spontaneously. To develop, they require a weakly organized system with sizable spin and low level inflow.
  5. Low values (less than about 23 mph) of vertical wind shear between the surface and the higher altitudes of the atmosphere. Vertical wind shear is the magnitude of wind change with height. Large values of vertical wind shear disrupt the incipient tropical cyclone and can prevent genesis, or, if a tropical cyclone has already formed, large vertical shear can weaken or destroy the tropical cyclone by interfering with the organization of deep convection around the cyclone centre.

To be short the ingredients for a hurricane include a pre-existing weather disturbance, warm tropical oceans, moisture, and relatively light winds aloft. If the right conditions persist long enough, they can combine to produce the violent winds, incredible waves, torrential rains, and floods we associate with this devastating monster from nature; that threatens many lives over and over again.

The Azores high



It has been recognized since at least the 1930s  that lower part of the atmosphere (from the ocean surface to about 3 miles) westward travelling disturbances often serve as the "seedling" circulations for a large proportion of tropical cyclones over the North Atlantic Ocean. These disturbances, now known as African easterly waves, had their origins over the North African coast. 
A very important ingredient is the co-called African easterly jet. This jet arises as the result of temperature difference between the extremely warmth over the Saharan Desert and the substantially lower temperatures along the Gulf of Guinea coast.

When these two air masses meet, the atmosphere will become very unstable and (very heavy) thunderstorms, with areas of low pressure, develop. These storms and lows travel west with the trade wind flow across the Atlantic Ocean. They are first seen usually in April or May and continue until October or November. When the conditions, as described above, are there; a hurricane is born. But, thankfully, most of these thunderstorms will die out and never reach the hurricane-stage. On average, about 60 storms and lows are generated over North Africa each year, but it appears that the number that is formed has no relationship to how much tropical cyclone activity there is over the Atlantic each year.

While only about 60% of the Atlantic tropical storms and minor hurricanes originate from these African thunderstorms and lows, nearly 85% of the intense (or major) hurricanes have their origins as a severe thunderstorm.  It is even suggested, though, that nearly all of the tropical cyclones that occur in the Eastern Pacific Ocean can also be traced back to Africa.

It is currently completely unknown how those easterly thunderstorms change from year to year in both intensity and location and how these might relate to the activity in the Atlantic (and East Pacific).

El Niņo and Hurricanes

Does El Niņo (a sudden rise of seawater temperature in the east-Pacific, before the Peruvian coast) affect hurricanes? 
Its likely that the answer is "yes". Of course one autumn will bring more and more severe hurricanes than another autumn. For example in 1997 the Caribbean got seven tropical storms but only three grew out to hurricanes. This small amount of hurricanes was certainly due to a very strong  El Niņo during that year.

El Niņo changes the jet streams, a strong westerly at about 30.000 feet. During a strong El Niņo  the jet stream grows stronger and moves somewhat southwards to the Caribbean. So at higher altitudes the winds become stronger than normal, and the huge towering complexes of clouds, which normally accompanies and reinforces a hurricane are blown to pieces; with the result that the storm dies out.

The year 1997 was a strong El Niņo-year, followed by two La Niņa-years (1998 en 1999). During a La Niņa  the Peruvian Seawater is colder than normal. This had a immediate impact on hurricane activity; eight visited the Caribbean and the American south-east coast; whereby Mitch, end of October 1998,  was the strongest and most devastating hurricane ever; reaching class 5. 
The El Niņo effects at the American West coast is reverse. During an El Niņo year the coast will be visited by more hurricanes.
But not only El Niņo influences the amount of hurricanes in the Caribbean. There is also a connection with the weather in Western Africa, the Sahel. The rain- and thunderstorms in that area are a source for lows. These lows can produce tropical storms and eventual hurricanes, as explained above.

Hurricane names 

The WMO (World Meteorological Organization) has redacted a list of names that will be used for coming hurricanes. In the past it was already usual to name a hurricane after the  saint of the day at which the storm brought destruction and terror to a country. Like in 1825 on the 26th of July Puerto Rico was visited by Santa Ana. During the 20th century hurricanes were named after the latitude and longitude, but that appeared to be very confusing.
During the WO II meteorologists started with names in alphabetical order, the first storm of the season started with an  "A", the second a "B', etc.
Eventually in 1970 the American Hurricane Centre came with a list of names, that were repeated every 10 years. The Director choose the names of the women in his family.

This leaded to protests from feministic organizations and in 1979 the names were altered male and female.

At the moment the WMO has a list of names for tropical depressions, when the wind reaches force 8 Beaufort, for the coming six years. These names will be repeated, except for the names which eventually where devastating. These names won't be used anymore.

Warnings

Meteorologists can rather accurately calculate the track a hurricane will follow.
The threatened population of an area can be warned and evacuated in time.
Especially the Hurricane Centres in the United States are very specialized in this part of meteorology. And due to them, the number of victims is strongly reduced during the last decennia.

The hurricane-prone area is intensively scanned with scouting planes; but also buoys at sea, or data from satellites and radar are available for calculations.

Only area's with very bad communication and living-conditions, like Central America and Bangladesh, for example, can severely suffer under tropical cyclones.
And many lives are lost again and again.

Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones?

By using silver iodide:
Actually for a couple decades NOAA and its predecessor tried to weaken hurricanes by dropping silver iodide - a substance that serves as a effective ice nuclei - into the rain bands of the storms. The idea was that the silver iodide would enhance the thunderstorms of the rain band by causing the super cooled water to freeze, thus liberating the latent heat of fusion and helping the rain band to grow at the expense of the eye wall. With a weakened convergence to the eye wall, the strong inner core winds would also weaken quite a bit. Neat idea, but it, in the end, had a fatal flaw: there just isn't much super cooled water available in hurricane convection - the buoyancy is fairly small and the updrafts correspondingly small compared to the type one would observe in mid-latitude continental super or multi-cells. The few times that they did seed and saw a reduction in intensity was undoubtedly due to what is now called "concentric eyewall cycles".

A substance on the ocean surface:
As for the other ideas, there has been some experimental work in trying to develop a liquid that when placed over the ocean surface would prevent evaporation from occurring. If this worked in the tropical cyclone environment, it would probably have a detrimental effect on the intensity of the storm as it needs huge amounts of oceanic evaporation to continue to maintain its intensity  However, finding a substance that would be able to stay together in the rough seas of a tropical cyclone proved to be the downfall of this idea.


Nuking them:
Lastly, there always appears ideas during the hurricane season that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the concern that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the trade winds  over land. Needless to say, this is not a good idea. 

By etc:
Perhaps the best solution is not to try to alter or destroy the tropical cyclones, but just learn to co-exist better with them. Since we know that coastal regions are vulnerable to the storms, enforce building codes that can have houses stand up to the force of the tropical cyclones. Also the people that choose to live in these locations should willing to shoulder a fair portion of the costs in terms of property insurance - not exorbitant rates, but ones which truly reflect the risk of living in a vulnerable region.


Last but not least the SCALE
Hurricanes can be classified. The scale that is often used is from Saffir-Simpson, as given below. To give an indication: the most devastating hurricane, Mitch, October 1998, was a class 5 hurricane. 

SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE

Scale
NR

Central
Pressure

Winds
MPH

Surge
FT

Damage

1

>28.94" (>980mb)

74-95

4-5

Minimal

2

28.91-28.50" (979-965mb)

96-110

6-8

Moderate

3

28.47-27.91" (964-945mb)

111-130

9-12

Extensive

4

27.88-27.17" (944-920mb)

131-155

13-18

Extreme

5

<27.17" (<920mb)

>155

>18

Catastrophic

Photo's from NOAA; National Hurricane Centre
With thanks to: www.NOAA.com

Mail to: wijke@scribeweekly.com


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