Tech Shout!

Don’t be baffled about the climate, which has become so extreme these days all over the world. According to news agencies, a study has found that the number of Atlantic hurricanes in an average season has doubled in the last century because of warmer seas and changing wind patterns caused by global warming.

The new study was carried out by Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Peter Webster of Georgia Institute of Technology. They found three periods since 1900 when the average number of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes augmented sharply, and then leveled off and remained steady. The scientists revealed that the increase in the number of the hurricanes has taken place in two jumps, with an average of 6 tropical cyclones per year from 1905 to 1930, mounting to 10 tropical storms from 1931 to 1994 and 15 tropical storms from 1995 to 2005, hurricanes included.

But there are some skeptics of this theory, who feel that the data from the early decades of the 20th Century is not dependable as cyclones probably formed and died in mid-ocean, where no one knew they existed. But Holland and Webster defended their work saying that the improved data from the last half of the century cannot be exclusively responsible for the increase. They wrote, “We are led to the confident conclusion that the recent upsurge in the tropical cyclone frequency is due in part to greenhouse warming, and this is most likely the dominant effect.”

Whatever it is, changes in the temperature have caused weather-related differences all over the world. Two years ago, the United States was hit by Hurricane Katrina, which prompted the American authorities to evacuate New Orleans. This year too, there were floods in England, which led the British authorities to evacuate lots of people. Closer home in India, we have had a lot of changes in the temperature. So it seems that people as well as the governments will have to take this issue very seriously.