How Does Climate Change Affect Hurricanes

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Purpose of Experiment

We chose how climate change affected hurricanes as our topic because it’s important to understand hurricanes and how it is created and formed. Over the past years, the intensity of hurricanes have increased due to what is believe by warming waters/oceans. As you can see, our topic needs to be understood so that people around the world will be prepared and know when and why hurricanes are created.
Methods

First, we gathered information about hurricanes and climate change. This helped us understand our topic more and see how climate change affects our world through things like the amount and strength of hurricanes. Then, we found data proving that climate change creates warmer sea temperatures, making stronger hurricanes. …show more content…

Hurricanes form near the equator over warmer ocean waters. The word hurricane is used to describe large storms that form in the Atlantic Ocean or the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The scientific term for hurricanes is tropical cyclone. Hurricanes may also be known as typhoons, cyclones, severe tropical cyclones, and cyclonic storms. Hurricanes mostly depend on warm water to fuel themselves. Tropical cyclones form in tropical regions where the ocean is 80º for the top 50 meters of sea. Hurricanes need warm water as well as wind for a main ingredient. Warm water fuels the hurricane and creates higher wind speeds. Wind blowing westward across the Atlantic from Africa helps in the creation of hurricanes. The wind passing over the sea surface makes water evaporate and rise. As the water rises, the water vapor cools. This then condenses back into large water droplets, forming cumulonimbus clouds. The development of a tropical cyclone is divided into four main stages: tropical disturbance, tropical depression, tropical storm, and finally, tropical …show more content…

Heat energy is then released from cooling water vapor. The top of the clouds become warmer and make the air pressure higher. This causes wind to move outward and away from the low pressure zone. Air move towards the lower pressure zone and creates more thunderstorms. Wind in the storm cloud center then spin faster in a circular motion reaching winds between 25 to 38 mph. When winds reach 39 mph they are considered a tropical storm and the storm is named based on what letter and gender scientist left off on for hurricane names. Wind then blows faster and faster as it twists and turns around the eye of the storm. The eye of the storm is a calm center.
Fun fact: In the Northern hemisphere the wind goes counterclockwise and in the Southern hemisphere the wind goes clockwise. This is the Coriolis effect. When wind speed reaches 74 mph the tropical storm is now considered a tropical cyclone or a hurricane. The storm will then be at least 50,000 feet high and 125 miles across. The eye of the hurricane is between 5 to 30 miles wide. Trade winds blowing east to west push the hurricane west. This includes areas like Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, or southeastern part of the U.S. The winds and low air pressure causes a mound of water to pile up near the mound of the eye which can cause a lot of damage if it hits

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