Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Geography: Tropical
Storms
- Causes of tropical storms
- They start with hurricanes over the sea at a temperature of at least 27 C
- The warm air from the sea
combines with the warm air from
the thunderstorm and this warm air
rises
- Due to the Earth's rotation, the storm starts to move in a spiral. The direction
of the spiral depends on which hemisphere it occurs in.
- The warm air forms clouds when it cools and condenses. The cooler air
is sucked downwards as the wind speed starts to increase.
- The tropical storm then moves over the ocean in a westerly direction
because of the spin of the earth from east to west.
- Coriolis effect
- In the northern hemisphere the
tropical storms spin in an
anti-clockwise direction and in the
southern hemisphere they spin in a
clockwise direction.
- Tropical storms are areas of low pressure that are
surrounded by high pressure which then cause huge
swirling masses of clouds
- Effects of Tropical Storms
- Primary Effects
- Tropical Storm Haiyan (2013, Philippines)
- Destroyed buildings
- No standing structures
a kilometer inland
- Houses flattened
- Hurricane Sandy (2012,USA)
- Crops destroyed
- 69 Deaths in the Caribbean
- Secondary Effects
- Nearly a million people without power
- Petrol rationed
- Spread of Cholera
in flooded areas
- Local people homeless
- Little food, no clean
water, no electricity
- Roads Blocked
- Deaths from drowning
- Wide spread looting
- Reducing the Damage of Tropical Storms
- Forecast
- Prepare
- Act
- Evacuation plans put in place
- Education programmes to raise awareness on
preparing and responding to a tropical storm, school
lessons and posters can be used to spread awareness
- In some areas buildings are designed and built to withstand tropical
storms with features such as water resistant windows and windproof tiles.
- In less developed countries they can't afford to develop buildings so
they use other methods to prepare such as:
- Educating women what to wear in case they have to swim
- Building homes on stilts
- Building cyclone shelters
- Forecasts made by the National
Hurricane Warning Centre (Atlantic)
- Typhoon Warning Centre (Pacific)
- Forecasts are available on the
internet so that anyone within the
cone of uncertainty can prepare for
the worst
- The speed and path of a tropical storm can
be affected by many different factors so
they are hard to predict
- More tropical storms to come?
- There is disagreement to
whether the number of
tropical storms is changing
- Satellites were only used to monitor
tropical storms since the 1960s so the
number might have not been accurate
before then
- Natural Cycle could mean that the amount of
tropical storms reduces again soon when it gets
to the end of the cycle.
- Number of tropical storms has doubled in the last 100 years
- Global warming means the surface of
the ocean have warmed up by 0.5 C
- Since 1195 hurricanes have
become more frequent and
intense.
- Short-term changes to the number of tropical
storms may not be due to the actions of people