Most intense cyclones are becoming stronger as seas warm: study

A new study says the most powerful tropical cyclones are becoming more intense over the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans as sea temperatures continue to rise.

In the study released Wednesday in the journal Nature, U.S. researchers analyzed 25 years of satellite data to show that maximum wind speeds per cyclone are increasing as the oceans warm and that the stronger the cyclone, the greater the change in wind speed.
“Our results are qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind,” they report in the study.

James Elsner and Thomas Hagger from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., and James Kossin from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis., calculated that an increase of one degree Celsius in surface sea temperature could lead to an increase of nearly one- third in the number of strong cyclones.

CBC