High tide flooding may lessen across the US, scientists predict
NOAA's 2024-25 Annual High Tide Flooding Outlook predicts fewer high-tide flood days than last year.
NOAA's 2024-25 Annual High Tide Flooding Outlook predicts fewer high-tide flood days than last year.
Earth Sciences
8 hours ago
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Northern Florida, the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina and parts of North Carolina are bracing for severe rain and catastrophic flooding this week as the Debby storm system moves up and east.
Environment
18 hours ago
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Hurricane Debby landed in Florida Monday bringing high winds, pouring rain—and 25 tightly wrapped packages of cocaine worth more than $1 million.
Environment
Aug 5, 2024
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Space hurricanes are a recently discovered geomagnetic phenomenon in which plasma interacts with Earth's magnetosphere, the area of space dominated by Earth's magnetic field. Spiral arms of plasma, hundreds of kilometers ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 31, 2024
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Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America. But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall—and potentially ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 24, 2024
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277
Hurricane season is here, with Hurricane Beryl already leaving a trail of damage after hitting Texas' shorelines. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting a record number of named storms in ...
Environment
Jul 22, 2024
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As Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast continue recovering from Hurricane Beryl, a new survey from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University is providing insight into Texans' past experiences with extreme weather, ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 19, 2024
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A team of University of Virginia researchers has released the first-ever database of hurricane evacuation orders in the United States. By examining what has worked (and hasn't) in the face of oncoming hurricanes, leaders ...
Environment
Jul 18, 2024
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A Rutgers University-New Brunswick-led research team employing an emerging technique to detect signs of past hurricanes in coastal sediments has found evidence of storms dating back more than 400 years. In doing so, they ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 17, 2024
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117
Here's a troubling phrase hurricane forecasters hate but often hear: "It's just a Category 1. Nothing to worry about."
Environment
Jul 12, 2024
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A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones feed on heat released when moist air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor contained in the moist air. They are fueled by a different heat mechanism than other cyclonic windstorms such as nor'easters, European windstorms, and polar lows, leading to their classification as "warm core" storm systems. Tropical cyclones originate in the doldrums near the equator, about 10° away from it.
The term "tropical" refers to both the geographic origin of these systems, which form almost exclusively in tropical regions of the globe, and their formation in maritime tropical air masses. The term "cyclone" refers to such storms' cyclonic nature, with counterclockwise rotation in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise rotation in the Southern Hemisphere. Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by names such as hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, and simply cyclone.
While tropical cyclones can produce extremely powerful winds and torrential rain, they are also able to produce high waves and damaging storm surge as well as spawning tornadoes. They develop over large bodies of warm water, and lose their strength if they move over land. This is why coastal regions can receive significant damage from a tropical cyclone, while inland regions are relatively safe from receiving strong winds. Heavy rains, however, can produce significant flooding inland, and storm surges can produce extensive coastal flooding up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) from the coastline. Although their effects on human populations can be devastating, tropical cyclones can also relieve drought conditions. They also carry heat and energy away from the tropics and transport it toward temperate latitudes, which makes them an important part of the global atmospheric circulation mechanism. As a result, tropical cyclones help to maintain equilibrium in the Earth's troposphere, and to maintain a relatively stable and warm temperature worldwide.
Many tropical cyclones develop when the atmospheric conditions around a weak disturbance in the atmosphere are favorable. The background environment is modulated by climatological cycles and patterns such as the Madden-Julian oscillation, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, and the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Mode. Others form when other types of cyclones acquire tropical characteristics. Tropical systems are then moved by steering winds in the troposphere; if the conditions remain favorable, the tropical disturbance intensifies, and can even develop an eye. On the other end of the spectrum, if the conditions around the system deteriorate or the tropical cyclone makes landfall, the system weakens and eventually dissipates. It is not possible to artificially induce the dissipation of these systems with current technology.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA