Why Hurricanes and Typhoons Are Getting Stronger Due to Climate Change

Understanding Tropical Storms: Formation and Intensification
Tropical storms are dangerous weather patterns that can happen anywhere in the world as long as there is low pressure and warm water in the seas. The following factors contribute to their occurrence:

1. Warm Sea Surface Temperature (SST): The ocean water is usually above 26.5 degrees Celsius (ca. 80 °F degrees Fahrenheit), which is great for making storms. The water in the ocean warms the air just above the surface, which makes it rise and form low-pressure areas.

2. Unstable air in the atmosphere: As the warm air rises, it condenses and warms up, which gives the storm more power.

3. The Coriolis effect, which gives storms and typhoons their spiral-like shape, causes the storm to tend to spin. Rotation causes this effect.

4. Low Vertical Wind Shear: The storm can grow because there aren't significant changes in height, wind speed, and wind direction. This feature lets the storm's structure stay together.

With these winds, storms can easily get stronger if the conditions are right. This means that when the storm hits land, it will have higher wind speeds, heavy rain, and more damage.

The effect of rising sea temperatures on the severity of storms

The top of the oceans is getting warmer because more greenhouse gases are being released into the atmosphere. Through different processes, this warming directly makes tropical storms stronger in the ways below:

1. Energy availability has increased because the seas are better at absorbing heat energy, which storms then release into the air. This energy leads to the formation of larger storms by intensifying convection currents. Storms bring in more water vapor and heat as they move across warm seas because of their stronger winds and rain. It gets drier during storms and rains harder when the seas pull in more water vapor and heat.

2. "More moisture content": When the SST goes up, the rate of evaporation goes up, too. This makes the atmosphere wetter. As a result, strong storms occur, capable of causing both flooding and heavy rain. As climate change worsens, the air warms. This phenomenon enables hurricanes to retain more water vapor, leading to an increase in rainfall during storms.

3. Reduced Oceanic Cooling: It's possible for warmer surface waters to stop lower, cooler waters from mixing with them. Typically, high SST values persist even after the storm has passed. The storm stays the same or gets stronger over a long period of time because of this increased warmth.

4. Extended Storm Seasons: When the sea temperature is higher, it takes longer for storms to form, which makes storm seasons busy.

Rising sea levels are linked to stronger storms, according to real-world evidence.

Numerous studies have provided ample evidence linking higher sea temperatures to stronger storms.

1- Increased Wind Speeds: Studies have shown that climate change has made Atlantic storms' upper wind speeds higher. As an example, a study found that climate change caused the top wind speeds of almost eighty percent of Atlantic Basin storms between 2019 and 2023 to rise by about eighteen miles per hour.

2- Higher Number of Category 4 and 5 Storms: It looks like the number of Category 4 and 5 storms and typhoons is going up. This trend fits with rising sea surface temperatures (SSTs), since warm waters need energy to turn into those powerful storms.

3- Higher rates of rainfall: When the air is warmer, it can hold more water, which leads to storms with higher rates of rainfall. Moreover, this intensifies flooding both during and after the storm. Climate change causes temperatures to rise, which in turn increases the capacity to hold water vapor during a hurricane. This phenomenon accelerates the rate of precipitation during a storm.



A few hurricanes and typhoons that have happened recently show the trend among storms getting stronger:

1- Hurricane Harvey: Harvey was a category 5 hurricane that stopped over Texas in late August 2017 and caused terrible floods from the heavy rain.
Higher temperatures of the sea surface in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to the storm's extreme severity.

2- Typhoon Haiyan in 2013: With "winds at a portion of between 190 km/h (ca. 118 mph) and 225 km/h (ca. 140 mph)," one of Haiyan's wrongs cost the United Nations an estimated 5 billion USD, which the Southeast Asian countries "paid" for. It goes without saying that some slashies' kind-hearted international agencies, pacific parents, and international money funds poured the rest of the money into blue ocean waters with the goal of turning them back blue with the help of the slowly cooling Pacific waters.

3- Hurricane Maria in 2017: It would take more than ten years to heal the wounds that were made in the past and the present, which would mean losing about three thousand lives. It was a fast-moving storm that destroyed U.S. treasures and killed nearly half a million people. The higher-than-normal water temperatures made the damage even worse.

Next Trends in Forecast Due Dates

Recent data and monitoring estimates show that if global warming continues without limits, storms will destroy large parts of the world:

1- Stronger Storms: Over the years, predicted storms have looked down from above Earth's polarized snow-topped triangles and increased cyclonic turbulence by an average of 4%. They have also slowed down warping velocity by about $500 billion to tens of trillions of dollars because of rains rising and clearing out 10% to 15% of the atmosphere.

2- More Frequent Intense Storms: Plane rides suggest that violence is rising, and most people think that the intensity of storms will ease over the coming years. However, thousands of cycles of winds have changed the situation, and the number of storms has been increasing, causing more intense conflicts. Hills don't cut; storms have been getting worse, and they've caused a lot of damage over the past four decades.