Cyclone:Manifestation of Global Warming

-by Raymond Tan
The devastating cyclone in Myanmar recently has strengthened the cause for conserving our environment. As to 6th of May, 2008, death toll is reported to exceed 15,000, a staggering number that is bound to strike fear down everyone's spine.

Cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are not new happenings in our world. They have been part of the climate cycle that maintains our Earth's dynamic equilibrium. However, the increase in carbon dioxide emission has altered the Earth's weather.Polar ice caps melt, sea water temperature rise; these are the contributing factors that magnified the destructive effects of cyclones.

It is not surprising that the cyclone in Myanmar has correlations with the effects of global warming. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase the Earth's temperature, thus increasing the evaporation rate at the same time. Oceans absorb much more heat than in the past century and with this temperature rise, the oceans expand and consequently sea level is raised.

Scientists have attempted to draw a correlation between rising earth temperature and tropical cyclone frequencies. Most of them were published in the journal Science. In 2005, a study examined the duration and maximum wind speeds of each tropical cyclone that formed over the last 30 years and found that their destructive power has increased around 70 percent in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This study strongly proves the relationship between the rise in sea surface temperatures and cyclone frequencies in regions where tropical cyclones typically originate.

However, although the records have been positive, there is not enough storm taken as sample to prove that there is 100% correlation between the two factors. A 2006 study published in Geophysical Research Letters, relying on global surface wind and temperature records between 1958 and 2001, found that a 0.45 °F (0.25 °C) increase in mean annual tropical sea surface temperature corresponded to a 60 percent increase in a tropical cyclone’s potential destructiveness.Furthermore, researches have also found out that one percent annual increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the next 80 years would produce more intense storms.

Is this enough to prove that global warming is deleterious to all of us? Yes, certainly. It's hard to convince people the severity of global warming, more so is the climacteric effects brought by it because people cannot imagine how is melting of polar ice caps going to affect their lives. But now, with the recent Myanmar cyclone in the headlines, it will be intriguing if people still do being asinine to nature's call: the call to stop global warming.