A National Oceanic at Atmospheric Administration study said there’s a potential link in the decline of air pollution to the increase in the number of hurricanes. State Climatologist Barry Keim said efforts in North America and Europe to improve the environment have shown a surge in Atlantic hurricanes.
“Now in contrast what they are finding is that over off the Asian coast, of the China coast in the western Pacific, they’ve had a reduction in typhoons, because they have increased pollution, which is really interesting,” said Keim.
Keim said the logic behind these findings is due to particulate pollution. He said pollution blocks out the sun’s rays and off of the heavily polluted Asian coast it leads to cooler sea surface temperatures and as a result fewer typhoons. But in contrast closer to home…
“We’ve put in all sorts of efforts to reduce pollution for health reasons but it’s keeping the atmosphere cleaner and more transparent to the sun’s rays which are heating up all those sea surface temperatures and leading to an increase in hurricanes,” said Keim.
Environmental efforts in the US have decreased pollution by about 50% which Keim said has created a much cleaner and more transparent atmosphere allowing the sun to heat sea surface temperatures.
“And they believe that’s feeding into an increase in hurricane activity to the tune of about a 34% increase in the total number of storms that we’ve been seeing in the past few decades,” said Keim.
While Keim expects the research to be heavily scrutinized and said there’s a tradeoff by having a cleaner environment which helps reduce lung disease and environmental cancers.
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