Scientists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that hurricanes in North Atlantic increased over the past 150 years. However, such a trend is not observed in the rest of the world. This is reported in the article published in the Nature Communications magazine. Briefly about scientific work is described in a press release on PHYS.ORG.
Researchers have created climate models for the reconstruction of the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and tropical cyclones around the world over the past few centuries. The results confirmed historical records, according to which in the North Atlantic over the past 150 years there is a general strengthening of storm activity.
The most complete record of tropical cyclones is collected in the IBTRACS database (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship). It includes modern measurements from satellites and aircraft, starting in the 1940s. Older recordings are based on reports from ships and islands, which have faced hurricanes, and go to 1851.
At first, scientists have created a digital map of the reconstructed sea routes in the Atlantic and the trajectories of modern hurricanes. The researchers then calculated the likelihood that the ship will face a hurricane or misses it. It turned out that a significant number of early storms was probably missed in historical records. Thus, there is a high probability that the activity of the storms has not changed over the past 150 years. However, such results do not take into account the possibility of changing the trajectories of hurricanes.
In a new study, scientists have created three different climate models in the past by combining it with the Hurricane model, which allows you to trace the development of tropical storms and their trajectories. All models have shown an unambiguous strengthening of hurricanes in North Atlantic for another 150 years ago. In addition, the results revealed the “hurricane drought” of the 70-80s of the XX century, when the number of storms decreased. Scientists explain this cooling of the Atlantic due to sulfate aerosols as fossil fuel combustion products. However, the reasons for the enhancement of the activity of hurricanes remain unknown.