May 26, 2020 07:00:00

40 years of satellite data revealed how strong the 'hurricane' is each year

by

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

It is shown that global warming not only seriously damages the ecosystem of the earth, but also has various effects such as an increase in the number of deaths due to traffic accidents and violence, and an increase in suicide due to an adverse effect on mental health. It has been. Forty years of research on satellite data reported that hurricanes are becoming stronger year by year.

Global increase in major tropical cyclone exceedance probability over the past four decades | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/12/1920849117

Long-term data show hurricanes are getting stronger --ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200518154948.htm

40 Years of Data Confirm Hurricanes Are Getting Stronger. Climate Models Were Right
https://www.sciencealert.com/hurricanes-really-are-getting-stronger-and-there-sa-likely-human-fingerprint

Researchers

at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyze infrared thermometry data collected by geostationary satellites from 1979 to 2017 to investigate the impact of global warming on the power of hurricanes. Did.

James Kossin, who led the study , pointed out that at the time of the 2013 study , which was based on a 28-year dataset, 'hurricanes tend to be stronger year by year.' However, the 2013 study was relatively inconclusive and the data set was relatively short, so Kossin said he did this to demonstrate statistically significant results.

For many years, researchers have proposed the hypothesis that 'global warming raises the temperature of seawater and increases humidity in the atmosphere, which in turn increases the power of hurricanes.' However, hurricanes occur only sporadically, and hurricanes that occur at sea are ignored if they do not affect the area where humans live, and there is a problem that it is difficult to gather detailed data.

“The main hurdle in finding trends in hurricanes is that the data is being collected by'the best technology at the time, '” Kossin said. Since the equipment that collects data such as hurricanes has been upgraded year by year, it seems that it is not unusual for the content and accuracy included in the data to vary from observed year to year, and all satellite data is treated like patchwork. It is said that work such as joining is required.

However, in recent years, computer models useful for analyzing data from satellites have been developed, so the research team analyzed how the power of hurricane changed based on satellite data collected from 1979 to 2017. I was able to do. Research shows that classification of

Safa Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale increases the likelihood that a hurricane will develop `` Category 3 '' at 177 km / h or higher by 8% every 10 years from 1979. It turns out. The hurricane was shown to grow stronger year by year.

While it was confirmed that the hurricane is becoming stronger year by year as hypothesized, the research team acknowledges that not only global warming but various other factors contribute to the strength of the hurricane. 'The results of this study are good progress and strengthen our confidence that global warming will strengthen hurricanes. But our findings show exactly how human activity strengthened hurricanes. Nor did they show the impact of natural changes on the strength of the hurricane, 'said Kossin.

Even so, the hurricane strengthening from 1979 to 2017 is consistent with the results of the global warming simulation. 'Our findings that hurricanes are getting stronger year by year are in line with our expectations of how hurricanes respond to global warming,' Kossin claimed.