Tropical storms Flashcards
(24 cards)
What are the different names for tropical storms in each region of the world?
- Hurricanes: Atlantic + NE pacific
- Typhoon: NW Pacific
- Cyclone: SW Pacific + Indian
What direction do tropical storms turn in which hemisphere?
- Northern hemisphere: clockwise
- Southern hemisphere: anticlockwise
What is the effect called that causes tropical storms to turn in different directions in different hemispheres?
The Coriolis effect
Why does the Coriolis effect occur?
The Earth’s rotation
What cell do tropical storms occur in?
Hadley
What are the conditions for a tropical storm to form?
- Warm water (26.5°C+)
- Usually in late summer or autumn (when water is warm)
- Low air pressure
- Weak tropical winds
- Occurs in the tropics
What is the centre of a tropical storm called?
The eye
What happens to air in the eye?
It descends
Where are wind speeds fastest?
Eye wall
How does climate change affect tropical storms?
- Due to increasing ocean temperatures, frequency of tropical storms is predicted to increase.
- These warmer waters would also mean tropical storms would extend further away from the equator.
- Rising sea levels would cause increased flooding in low-lying coastal areas.
What is the key study for tropical storms?
Typhoon Haiyan
Where was Typhoon Haiyan?
The Philippines
What part of the Philippines was worst affected?
Tacloban
When did Typhoon Haiyan make landfall?
7th November 2013 around 8:40am
What were the recorded windspeeds?
313 km/h, making it one of the strongest tropical storms ever recorded
How much rainfall was recorded?
282mm
Why was The Philippines so badly affected?
The Philippines is a relatively poor country, with minimal investment in planning, prediction, and protection schemes.
What were the 3 types of effects?
- Economic
- Social
- Envionmental
What were the economic impacts of Haiyan?
- Estimated cost of $5.8bn
- 6M people unemployed
- Agricultural areas were destroyed, affecting local and international trade
- Tacloban’s airport was damaged, affecting trade and tourism
- 30,000 boats were destroyed, affecting the fishing industry
What were the social effects of Haiyan?
- 7000 deaths
- 1.9m left homeless
- 6m displaced
- Disease outbreaks due to lack of sanitation, food, water, shelter, and medicine.
- Populations of less affected areas surged as there was an influx of refugees.
- Widespread looting took place in the days after.
What were the environmental effects of Haiyan?
- Widespread flooding
- 71k hectares of farmland affected
- Thousands of trees uprooted, releasing CO2 and destroying habitats.
- Roads were blocked by trees
- Flooding knocked over a barge carrying oil, causing an oil spill that affected mangrove ecosystems.
- 6m storm surge hit Tacloban bay
- The funnel shape of the bay increased the height of the storm surge.
What were the immediate responses?
- 750,000 residents were evacuated before the typhoon hit.
- The Philippines asked for international help.
- The UK government provided aid for up to 800,000 victims.
- Several charities provided emergency aid.
What were the long term responses?
- Helping people get their livelihoods back (repairing boats, distributing seeds)
- Charities installed water tanks
- The Philippines invested in disaster risk reduction, costing $648m in 2011.
- The UN donated $480m in 2014
How are tropical storms predicted?
- Forecasting centres use satellite images, weather instruments, and computer predictions to detect and track tropical storms.
- Warnings are issued to places likely to be in the storms path.
- Reinforced aircraft fly through and over tropical storms to collect data, which can be used to track and predict the storm.
