Posted by
moneymaker
515 days ago
(http://www.reuters.com)
Category: Science Discovery Environment |
El Nino, a warming of eastern Pacific waters, has become a dominant storm indicator because it can flatten an Atlantic hurricane season by increasing the wind shear that can rip apart cyclones.
The jury is still out on the effects of the Saharan dust storms that can span the Atlantic, but scientists are intrigued by preliminary research showing a direct correlation between the sandy plumes and tropical cyclones.
"What we've seen is, more dust, fewer hurricanes," said William Lau, chief of the Laboratory for Atmospheres at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The busy and damaging hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, which rattled global energy and insurance markets, have heightened interest in storm forecasting and in research on factors that make tropical cyclones spin up into monster storms or wither and die at sea.
Four powerful hurricanes hit Florida in 2004 and the record-setting 2005 season produced Hurricane Katrina, which became the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history when it crushed the U.S. Gulf coast and swamped New Orleans, causing $80 billion in damage and killing 1,500 people.
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