I must admit I was fascinated when I read this report from a few months ago in D-brief on tropical cyclones, but then it fell through the cracks. I remain fascinated, though:
Recent research suggested tropical cyclones are moving toward the poles. But these analyses used data collected from instruments over a relatively short time period and the results sometimes disagreed with each other. [Forest dynamics expert Jan] Altman and the team of scientists wanted to find out how tropical cyclone activity changed over a long time and what ramifications the storms had.
Homes aren’t the only things impacted by cyclones, forests also get heavily damaged. Hurricane Katrina, for example, was estimated to have killed or seriously injured around 320 million trees. The team used that damage to determine the impact of changes in tropical cyclone activity. The researchers analyzed tree rings from six forests in northeastern Asia. The study areas traverse a latitudinal gradient from the southern tip of South Korea northward to costal Russia. The team examined tree rings from 54 species for tree growth and disturbance. Then they compared the data with a 40-year historical record of tropical cyclones in the region.
The farther north the researchers assessed, the more scientists realized cyclones were increasingly damaging trees over the past century, the team reports today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The findings provide evidence that northward tropical cyclone track migration caused more frequent forest disturbances during the last century in the western North Pacific,” Altman said.
Tthe changes in CO2, leading to a warmer world, causing weather patterns to change, is of leading interest because this suggests landfall at locations not accustomed to such violent weather phenomena. Indeed, given that new storm tracks are inevitable over the ocean itself, will these new tracks cause other unforeseen consequences as areas that have not seen storm turbulence on this scale begin to experience it?
This should be an area of slow but unstoppable interest.
