Getting close to Hurricanes

Natural disasters contain plenty of adverse events, such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and tropical cyclones. When I was struggling to choose the natural disaster’s type in the first talk, I saw the news about Hurricane Gonzalo which hit UK this week. Thinking of last Tuesday’s heavy rains and strong winds, I decided to focus on Hurricanes firstly.

The remains of Hurricane Gonzalo will hit Britain

Hurricanes, Typhoons and Cyclones

I do not know whether you are confused about differences among hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones like me on the initial stage. I just want to make them clear on the beginning. Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are all the same weather phenomenon, only different depending on places where they occur. We call the storms as “Hurricanes” in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific and use “Typhoons” and “Cyclones” to describe the same powerful storms in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean respectively. 

Super typhoons are so powerful they can be seen from space, as seen 

from this photo of Super Typhoon Bopha taken on Dec. 2.     

PHOTOGRAPH BY NASSA ISS/JSC

While the official hurricane season for the Atlantic Basin (the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico) runs from 1 June to 30 November. As seen in the graph below, the highest point of whole year is 10 September, but even in December, hurricanes still can occur.

numbers of tropical cyclones per 100 years

Here I found two pictures about hurricanes’ history tracks. From pictures, we can see the prevailing tracks of hurricanes in North Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific. Most of hurricanes move towards west at first, when approach a certain extent of latitude they often move towards northeast.

 All North Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific hurricanes

(at least Category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale)

All North Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific major hurricanes

(at least Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale)

The last graph I posted here is about numbers of hurricanes occurrence. As seen in this graph, the frequency of named cyclones occurrence has generally increased as time goes by, except several years (1887, 1915, 1933, 1936, 1968, 1994). But the tendency of hurricanes are not very obvious. Does the frequency of hurricanes occurrence change? If so, are there any influence factors? I will pay attention to these questions on the next post.

Bars depict number of named systems (open/yellow), hurricanes (hatched/green), 

and category 3 or greater (solid/red), 1886-2004 

In addition, I want to recommend some websites here:

• http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes

We can know some basic knowledge of various natural disasters on this website and what’s more we can find what we should do before, during and after these disasters.

• http://www.cyclonecenter.org/#/

It is an interesting and interactive website. We can learn more about cyclones and even predict future cyclone behavior there.