Tropical Cyclones Quiz

Tropical cyclones are rapidly rotating storm systems characterized by low-pressure centers, closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. They are referred to by different names depending on their location and strength, including hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, and tropical depression. These storms derive their energy from the evaporation of water from warm ocean waters, and they typically form over large bodies of relatively warm water. The strong rotating winds of a tropical cyclone are a result of the conservation of angular momentum imparted by the Earth's rotation as air flows inwards toward the axis of rotation. Warm sea surface temperatures are required for tropical cyclones to form and strengthen, and they tend to develop during the summer. There are several factors required for these thunderstorms to develop further, including atmospheric instability, high humidity, enough Coriolis force to develop a low-pressure center, a pre-existing low-level focus or disturbance, and upper-level divergence. Rapid intensification can occur when several conditions are in place, including extremely high water temperatures, low wind shear, and an upper-level anticyclone. Tropical cyclones can dissipate when they move over waters significantly cooler than 26.5 °C, experience vertical wind shear, interact with other weather systems, or make landfall.Understanding Tropical Cyclones: Classification, Naming, and Intensity Metrics

Tropical cyclones weaken and dissipate over land areas due to increased friction and the lack of warm, moist air.
Various techniques have been considered to artificially modify tropical cyclones, but none have been successful in altering their duration, intensity, power, or size.
Methods for assessing the intensity of tropical cyclones include surface, satellite, and aerial techniques, such as the Dvorak technique, wind-pressure relationships (WPRs), and scatterometers.
Intensity metrics used to measure tropical cyclones include accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), the Hurricane Surge Index, the Hurricane Severity Index, the Power Dissipation Index (PDI), and integrated kinetic energy (IKE).
Tropical cyclones are classified differently based on location, structure, and intensity, such as hurricanes, typhoons, and severe tropical cyclones.
Formal naming schemes have been introduced for different basins around the world, with each meteorological service assigning names to tropical cyclones that retain their names throughout their lifetimes for ease of communication.
Tropical cyclones have a clear "eye" at the center, which is surrounded by the "eyewall" where the greatest wind speeds and heaviest precipitation are found.
Tropical cyclones vary in size and can span a range of 100-2,000 km, with the largest on average in the northwest Pacific Ocean basin and the smallest in the northeastern Pacific Ocean basin.
The movement of tropical cyclones is influenced by environmental steering from prevailing winds and beta drift, which is the tendency to drift poleward and westward.
Environmental steering is the primary influence on tropical cyclone motion, and these storms are typically steered westward by east-to-west trade winds on the equatorial side of the subtropical ridge.
Beta drift is due to the superposition of a vortex and causes tropical cyclones to drift poleward and westward.
Understanding the classification, naming, and intensity metrics of tropical cyclones is crucial for forecasting and warning centers to communicate the potential impact of these storms to the public.Tropical Cyclones: Formation, Effects, and Response
Tropical cyclones are low-pressure systems that form over warm ocean waters and can cause significant destruction and loss of life.
There are three main components of tropical cyclone motion: the trade winds, the beta drift, and multiple storm interaction.
Tropical cyclones can cause natural phenomena such as large waves, heavy rain, floods, high winds, storm surges, rip currents, undertow, tornadoes, lightning, snowfall, and worsened wildfires.
Effects on property and human life include power outages, bridge and road destruction, disrupted infrastructure, damaged or destroyed homes and buildings, destroyed agriculture and livestock, financial losses, and disease propagation.
Tropical cyclones form in one of seven tropical cyclone basins, which are monitored by meteorological services and warning centers.
Preparations for tropical cyclones involve determining risk, checking insurance coverage and emergency supplies, and determining evacuation locations.
Tropical cyclones affect coastlines along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans and have caused about 2 million deaths since the 19th century.
Tropical cyclones can also have environmental effects such as bringing much-needed precipitation to dry regions, damaging or destroying ecosystems, and causing oil and chemical spills.
Hurricane response requires coordination between federal, tribal, state, local, and private entities and may involve assessment, restoration, and demolition of buildings, removal of debris and waste, repairs to infrastructure, and public health services.
Hurricane responders face many hazards such as exposure to chemical and biological contaminants, falls, electrocution, motor vehicle accidents, sleep deprivation and fatigue, mental stress, and heat stress.
Proxy data such as overwash deposits, beach ridges, and historical documents are used to gain insight into hurricane activity over the past thousands of years.
Major hurricane activity along the Gulf of Mexico coast varies on timescales of centuries to millennia, and a powerful typhoon struck southern China in 957.Tropical Cyclone: Observation, Forecasting, and the Influence of Climate Change
The official record for Pacific hurricanes only dates to 1949, and the tropical cyclone record goes back to 1848 in the south-west Indian Ocean. The Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project examined and analyzed the historical record of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic back to 1851, extending the existing database from 1886.
Before satellite imagery became available during the 20th century, many of these systems went undetected unless it impacted land or a ship encountered it by chance. The combined effects of ship destruction and remote landfall severely limit the number of intense hurricanes in the official record before the era of hurricane reconnaissance aircraft and satellite meteorology.
Each year on average, around 80 to 90 named tropical cyclones form around the world, of which over half develop hurricane-force winds of 65 kn (120 km/h; 75 mph) or more. Tropical cyclone activity peaks in late summer. Each particular basin has its own seasonal patterns, with the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season being September 10.
El Niño–Southern Oscillation has the largest effect on tropical cyclone activity. Most tropical cyclones form on the side of the subtropical ridge closer to the equator, then move poleward past the ridge axis before recurving into the main belt of the Westerlies. The Atlantic Ocean experiences depressed activity due to increased vertical wind shear across the region during El Niño years.
Climate change can affect tropical cyclones in a variety of ways, including an intensification of rainfall and wind speed, a decrease in overall frequency, an increase in the frequency of very intense storms, and a poleward extension of where the cyclones reach maximum intensity.
Intense tropical cyclones pose a particular observation challenge, as they are a dangerous oceanic phenomenon, and weather stations, being relatively sparse, are rarely available on the site of the storm itself. Tropical cyclones are tracked by weather satellites.
High-speed computers and sophisticated simulation software allow forecasters to produce computer models that predict tropical cyclone tracks based on the future position and strength of high- and low-pressure systems. Scientists are not as skillful at predicting the intensity of tropical cyclones.
Geopotential heights are used when creating forecasts and analyzing pressure systems. The lowest geopotential height level is 850 hPa, and the highest level is located at 200 hPa. Both the 200 and 300 hPa levels are mainly used to locate the jet stream.
In addition to tropical cyclones, there are two other classes of cyclones within the spectrum of cyclone types: extratropical cyclones and subtropical cyclones.
An extratropical cyclone is a storm that derives energy from horizontal temperature differences, which are typical in higher latitudes.
A subtropical cyclone is a weather system that has some characteristics of a tropical cyclone and some characteristics of an extratropical cyclone.
Climate models show a future decrease in frequency of tropical cyclones in most areas, except for increased frequency in the North Atlantic and central Pacific and significant decreases in the southern Indian Ocean and western North Pacific.
There has been a poleward expansion of the latitude at which the maximum intensity of tropical cyclones occurs, which may be associated with climate change. In the North Pacific, there may also have been an eastward expansion