Caribbean Catastrophe: Why the Gulf of Mexico is a hotspot for super hurricanes…

Just a week ago, a category 4 major hurricane by the name of Harvey dissipated into the wind after shredding through the Caribbean isles and crashing onto Texan shores in the Houston area. Today, Floridians North to South are bracing for the impact of hurricane Irma, expected to make landfall in under 12 hours. Is it just a stroke of bad luck that the Caribbean region could face two consecutive hurricanes of such size? Is it an act of God’s wrath? Or is it, as many are wondering, a consequence of insufficiently bridled climate change?

To begin with, the understanding of a hurricane’s nature is essential. Most accurately referred to as “tropical cyclones”, hurricanes form over warm ocean waters near the equator as faster evaporation of water creates irregularities in air pressure above the sea. The rising of warm air above the ocean causes a swirling in clouds, which amasses to a large and vigorous storm called a ‘hurricane’, ‘typhoon’, or even ‘cyclone’.

This time of year is the peak of the hurricane season, so it is expected that the Gulf of Mexico experience some very stormy weather, yet Harvey was the first major hurricane that the United States has experienced since hurricane Wilma in 2005. To top that off, Irma is a category 3 hurricane which has already claimed 24 lives thus far, with a course predicted to thunder up West Coast Florida, South to North. A third hurricane, Jose, has also appeared on the radar of weather experts, however it’s course is set mostly out of the way of Caribbean islands.

Three hurricanes in a single season is not unheard of, but certainly isn’t common, with only 5 occurrences in the past 50 years. Strong seasonal warming this year has caused ocean surface temperatures to rise around the equator recently, resulting in perfect conditions for hurricanes. As can be imagined, carbon emissions can and are inclined to cause higher temperatures in the atmosphere, particularly around the equator. Dr Richard Allan, the Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading, said that “while weather explains the formations and track of these tropical beasts, additional heating due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities will inevitably make them more deadly.” Explaining that even if climate change is not creating these monstrous hurricanes, they are certainly having a say in their size and wrath. Thereby it can once again be inferred that our harmful touch on our environment ultimately creates problems for us in the future, problems which in this case come in the form of billions of dollars worth of destruction and wreckage, as well as loss of precious life.

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