Human-caused climate change will make strong tropical cyclones twice as frequent by the middle of the century, putting large parts of the world at risk, according to a new study published in Scientific Advances.
Human-caused climate change will make strong tropical cyclones twice as frequent by the middle of the century, putting large parts of the world at risk, according to a new study published in Scientific Advances. The analysis also projects that maximum wind speeds associated with these cyclones could increase by around 20%.
Despite being amongst the world’s most destructive extreme weather events, tropical cyclones are relatively rare. In a given year, only around 80-100 tropical cyclones form globally, most of which never make landfall. In addition, accurate global historical records are scarce, making it hard to predict where they will occur and what actions Governments should take to prepare.
To overcome this limitation, an international group of scientists involving Ivan Haigh from the University of Southampton developed a new approach that combined historical data with global climate models to generate hundreds of thousands of “synthetic tropical cyclones”.
Read more at University of Southampton
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