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How Does Temperature Affect the Strength of a Cyclone?

Cyclones are also known as hurricanes or typhoons. Commonly confused with a tornado, a typical cyclone is a cloudy, stormy area of low pressure with a warm central core. The volatile clouds circulate around the central core, or eye, of the cyclone, generating vast amounts of rainfall and thunderstorms. Cyclones have varying strengths, dependent upon many outside influences, such as temperature.

Cyclone Origination
- Cyclones originate in many oceanic regions of the world, including the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and Coral Seas. Warm air rising over tropical waters creates a low-pressure region below the warm air mass. High-pressure air regions converge on the low-pressure area, causing an influx of new air that is immediately warmed. The air slowly cools, creating large amounts of clouds. With help from the earth's rotation, the cloud mass begins to spin, generating the cyclone's birth.
Water Temperature Effects
- Along the equator, the sun's rays are intense, warming the ocean water. As the water warms, it evaporates into the atmosphere, generating thunderstorms that form the bulk of a cyclone's cloud structure. For example, the Gulf of Mexico is a unique water body, since it is in the tropical zone as well as being incredibly shallow compared to the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. The shallow water heats up faster from the sun's rays, providing a boost to cyclones that enter from the Atlantic Ocean, such as Hurricane Katrina.
Air Temperature Effects
- Air above the ocean feeds the cyclone, as more water evaporates from the sea into the warm air. A cyclone disintegrates without a constant influx of warm, humid air from the ocean, as well as new air introduced from surrounding high-pressure areas. As a cyclone moves across land, it loses its energy and slowly breaks apart. Low wind shear, or wind directional changes, contributes to a strengthening cyclone, because there is no outside wind interference against the rotating wall of clouds.
Environmental Concerns
- Real Climate reports that global warming and the greenhouse effect will have a stark effect on cyclone generation. Since 1905, sea surface temperatures worldwide have increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius. A warmer atmosphere and ocean will contribute to more cyclones, as well as larger cyclones.
Ocean Temperature Differences
- Cyclones in the Pacific Ocean tend to be stronger than Atlantic Ocean cyclones. A Pacific storm uses the largest body of water on earth for pulling warm sea water into the atmosphere. USA Today.com states that between 1990 and 2004, 41 percent of Pacific cyclones produced wind speeds of 131 mph or more. In contrast, only 25 percent of Atlantic cyclones generated these fast, damaging wind speeds.

Nature