Hurricanes are one of the deadliest and catastrophic natural disasters that occur on Earth. Hurricane Katrina was one the worst disasters in human history, leaving more than 1,000 people dead and tens of thousands homeless. Predicting hurricane seasons is a difficult element to predict.
Judging from last year’s season of about twenty hurricanes in total, many meteorologists are predicting this year’s season to be just as active.
The Prediction Center predicts that the amount of storms we could be expecting this year is 12-18. They are also predicting 6-10 of these storms to be hurricanes. Also 3-6 of those hurricanes are to be major hurricanes.
The average hurricane season produces a total of 11 storms. They also fabricate 6 hurricanes, two of them being major hurricanes. As you may observe the predicted storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes are slightly higher than average.
Unfortunately though it this year is predicted to create more than 12 storms, as the Climate Prediction Center have already planned the names for these hurricanes. They have come up with 17 names, maybe which is how many they are expecting.
As you may have already concluded, this year’s hurricane season seems like a pretty active one. This is definitely not the news you would like to hear if you live in the Caribbean or in the United States near the Gulf of Mexico.
There is some good news though. Those predictions earlier have a 70% chance of being fulfilled. That is not to go without saying that maybe we will have more then expected storms.
Are hurricanes becoming worse? Some people accredit these worsening hurricanes with Global Warming. Studies from Geographic have found that hurricanes have a 50% longer duration and increase in strength, as a pose to the hurricanes that were recorded in the last three decades!
This article also claims that for every 1ºC change in sea surface temperature, the intensity of the storm should increase by 5%. What makes it strange is that we have had a ½ degree change in temperature at the surface. That should lead to a 2.5% increase in the intensity, which is not very noticeable. What we have been observing though is a significant increase in the strength of the storms.
What does this mean for this year? It means that if this trend continues we may have some pretty violent storms hitting us this year. Hopefully we are only hit by a small number of weak storms, although most meteorologist doubt this, (10% chance) one can only hope.
All in all, the 2011 hurricane season does not look too horrible but it definitely seems to be an active one!
