Experts have anticipated the arrival of up to eight hurricanes in the Atlantic for the 2004 season, three of which could become serious threats to Mexico and its neighbors. Unusually warm waters in the North Atlantic are just one of the signs warning scientists of the severity of this season.
Last May, in the middle of the premiere of the highly publicized Hollywood film The day after tomorrow, which dramatically exposed the maximized effects of global climate change, a famed group of scientists published dire forecasts for the 2004 hurricane season in the North American and Caribbean region. The summary of the article announced: “We estimate that 2004 will have around eight hurricanes… three of them of high intensity (categories 3-4-5)…”. In summary, the document ––published by William M. Gray, Philip J. Klotzbach and William Thorson, of the Tropical Meteorology Project of the Colorado State University (CSU) of the United States –– predicted cyclonic activity 45% above normal for the North Atlantic and Caribbean region. Philip J. Klotzbach, co-author of the CSU study, revealed why in an interview: “First of all, the northern and tropical Atlantic has recorded temperatures between 0.5 and 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than previous months; and, in general, a warm tropical Atlantic is quite favorable for the development of cyclonic activity.”
Neftalí Rodríguez Cuevas, researcher at the Engineering Institute and president of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Hydrometeorological Disturbing Phenomena of the National Civil Protection System, explains that “Year after year, at the beginning of the month of May, Gray and his group generate a forecast regarding the evolution of probable cyclonic disturbances in the season.” And he assures that there are serious reasons to worry, since in the last five years the CSU group’s forecasts have been quite accurate, with a margin of error of one in 14. Ricardo Prieto González, from the Mexican Institute of Water Technology ( IMTA), adds that before officially starting the hurricane season, up to three prior reviews of the final forecast are made.
On the other hand, information published by the National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States clarifies that, in the Caribbean and Pacific regions of the northwest, the meteorological phenomenon called “tropical cyclone ” are usually given, respectively, the names “hurricane” and “typhoon.” This phenomenon usually occurs in the waters of the planet’s tropical oceans and its main component is a dense region of clouds organized in a circular shape, known as the “eye”, which rotates around another cloud-free region. “The winds that rotate around the eye are very intense,” Prieto points out, “however, it is necessary that the average speed of its sustained winds, recorded in one minute, exceeds 118 kilometers per hour for the phenomenon to reach the category of hurricane.” ”.
The forecasts
In matters of cyclonic prediction, Gray and his group have the recognition of researchers and authorities throughout the region. In the dialogue between scientists and nature, the ocean and the atmosphere take the lead.
“One of the most frequently used methods to make this type of forecast is the comparison of information corresponding to different years,” explains Prieto González. It involves the analysis of global atmospheric and oceanic variables, which include alterations in the direction and intensity of winds and ocean temperature, as well as unusual decreases in atmospheric pressure, whether over South American waters or in the Indian Ocean. , or on the coasts of northwest Europe and Africa.
Information on current conditions is compared with records from previous years and by applying complex mathematical models, a series of results are obtained that allow forecasting, with a high degree of precision, the behavior of the following hurricane season.
The forecasts, published on the CSU Tropical Meteorology Project website by Gray and his group, are based on a novel statistical procedure that uses an analysis of global information collected from 1950 to the present.
Warm waters are the fuel for the tropical cyclone machinery, so in principle it is necessary for ocean water to be above 26 degrees Celsius. Phil Klotzbach says that a warm Atlantic provides a good amount of latent heat favorable to storm development. “On the other hand,” he continues, “high temperatures in the Atlantic basin are closely correlated with the presence of upward winds along the tropical Atlantic. This condition intensifies the movement of easterly winds coming from the coast of Africa, which have a great chance of becoming hurricanes.” The information collected by the CSU team confirms the presence of said condition this season.
However, Ernesto Jáuregui Ostos, from the Center for Atmospheric Sciences (CCA) at and an expert in global climate change, warns: “In reality, the important thing to know is that once the hurricane season begins, it is not How many will there be, but how many of them will touch Mexican lands?
Although it is true that specialists agree that the models applied by the CSU group to predict the number and intensity of hurricanes are quite consistent with what is observed in reality, it is also true that it is almost impossible to predict, and it is done with considerable margins of error, the path that a cyclone will follow and the place where it will finally make landfall with the already known consequences.
“If we had the ability to know the precise details about when, where and how a hurricane is going to affect us, those would be the key questions that would have to be answered; However, we are still very far from being able to obtain satisfactory answers,” says Jáuregui.
In Mexico, the number of people living in coastal areas has increased considerably over the last two decades. In 1990, the urban population distributed between the coasts of the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico totaled more than three and a half million inhabitants, according to an article published by Jáuregui Ostos in 2003, in the magazine Atmosphere edited by the CCA of the .
In order to protect the potentially vulnerable population, the National Meteorological System (SMN), which depends on the National Water Commission, constantly monitors disturbances approaching the national coasts and publishes its records on its html Internet page: //smn.cna.gob.mx/.
Prieto González, from IMTA, comments that “In Mexico, research, and, therefore, the understanding and generation of the frontier knowledge required about these phenomena, is at incipient levels.” The researcher asserts that with just a little more support for this area of knowledge, broad sectors of the population would benefit. May, in the middle of the premiere of the much-hyped Hollywood film The day after tomorrow, which dramatically exposed the maximized effects of global climate change, a famed group of scientists published dire forecasts for the 2004 hurricane season in the North American and Caribbean region. The summary of the article announced: “We estimate that 2004 will have around eight hurricanes… three of them of high intensity (categories 3-4-5)…”. In summary, the document ––published by William M. Gray, Philip J. Klotzbach and William Thorson, of the Tropical Meteorology Project of the Colorado State University (CSU) of the United States –– predicted cyclonic activity 45% above normal for the North Atlantic and Caribbean region. Philip J. Klotzbach, co-author of the CSU study, revealed why in an interview: “First of all, the northern and tropical Atlantic has recorded temperatures between 0.5 and 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than previous months; and, in general, a warm tropical Atlantic is quite favorable for the development of cyclonic activity.”
Neftalí Rodríguez Cuevas, researcher at the Engineering Institute and president of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Hydrometeorological Disturbing Phenomena of the National Civil Protection System, explains that “Year after year, at the beginning of the month of May, Gray and his group generate a forecast regarding the evolution of probable cyclonic disturbances in the season.” And he assures that there are serious reasons to worry, since in the last five years the CSU group’s forecasts have been quite accurate, with a margin of error of one in 14. Ricardo Prieto González, from the Mexican Institute of Water Technology ( IMTA), adds that before officially starting the hurricane season, up to three prior reviews of the final forecast are made.
Hurricane in the shower
Warm water is the key to the origin of tropical cyclones. Let’s look at the following analogy: inside a bathroom, when the water falling from the shower has become too hot, the plastic curtains that often surround it “swirl” slightly towards the inside of the hot water that falls and evaporates upward. towards the ceiling. The curtains tend to rise due to the vacuum formed by the vapor particles that rise incessantly. In the same way, when seawater evaporates continuously, it forms low pressure centers—analogous to the vacuum of water in a shower—that absorb everything in its path like a vacuum cleaner. In a warm, open ocean, a low pressure center will find nothing but water vapor to integrate into its system.
Imagine that instead of wasting hot water in the shower, you filled a tub with very hot water and then gently swirled it indefinitely in circles, imitating the rotational motion of the Earth. Sooner or later, the steam released from the water in the tub—assuming the water is kept hot—will tend to swirl in an organized fashion, like a crude little model of a hurricane.
Cyclones also feed off each other, as the winds that circulate in the low pressure zone cause more vapor to be released from the ocean surface, which intensifies the process until other factors, such as “starving” when making landfall or encountering with cold waters that stop feeding it, weaken it.
A well raised child
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