Tropical cyclones obey the law
Nature Physics
July 12, 2010
The discovery of an empirical law that governs tropical cyclones is reported online in Nature Physics this week. The effect of climate change on tropical cyclones is highly controversial, because such storms are not fully understood; therefore this work has implications for the debate.
Prior to satellite imaging of storms, historical records were incomplete. Alvaro Corral and co-workers solve this problem by focusing on the total energy released by individual storms, for which the methods developed for the physics of critical behaviour are available. They find that although small storms greatly outnumber large storms, the relative proportion of small to large ones is the same across four different ocean basins over several decades in time. They also note that the maximum energy is set by the size of the basin.
What is affected by the rising sea surface temperature is the proportion of large cyclones. However, despite the increased hurricane activity in the North Atlantic during 1995-2005, individual hurricanes have not released more energy when compared to other active periods before 1970.
doi: 10.1038/nphys1725
Research highlights
-
Jul 6
Biotechnology: Mice cloned from freeze-dried somatic cellsNature Communications
-
Jul 4
Particle physics: A decade of Higgs boson researchNature
-
Jul 1
Space health: The path of most resistance could help limit bone loss during spaceflightScientific Reports
-
Jun 30
Evolution: Hawks learn on the fly to swoop up before perchingNature
-
Jun 28
Astronomy: Hydrogen- and helium-rich exoplanets may provide habitable conditions for billions of yearsNature Astronomy
-
Jun 24
Sport science: New wearable sensor to measure neck strain may detect potential concussionScientific Reports