Intense rainfall, winds of 120 kilometers per hour or higher,
storm surge.
These are the signs of a hurricane
During its reign of terror.
A hurricane can release as much energy as 10,000 nuclear
bombs.
And guess what? There are two of them,
and they're on a collision course.
This is what if, and here's what would happen if
two hurricanes collided.
Meet Doctor Sakuhai Fujiwara, the Japanese meteorologist who first defined
the interaction between two hurricanes.
The Fujiwara effect describes what happens when two whirling weather
systems called cyclonic vortexes come close to each other.
Cyclonic vortexes could be hurricanes or typhoons,
and if they get within 1000 kilometers of each other,
they can be even more dangerous.
It doesn't occur very often,
but it does happen, and some scientists believe that it
will happen more often as global temperatures continue to rise.
The term hurricane gets its name from Huracan,
known in Mayan mythology as a God of wind,
storm and fire, and you're about to see why.
Hurricanes and typhoons form when warm,
moist air over the ocean rises and nearby air takes
its place,
forming swirls of air. As the warm,
rising air cools, it makes huge clouds filled with moisture.
These clouds continue to spin and expand,
causing intense rain, wind and surging tides wherever the storm
goes.
Hurricanes can be extremely costly,
both in material damages and in human lives.
So how much more devastation can we expect when two
hurricanes collide?
You might be looking up at 2 approaching storms and
think to yourself,
that can't be good. And you'd be right.
But how bad things are about to become for you
really depends on how big the storm is.
If two hurricanes are about the same size and strength,
they'll do a dance and orbit around a common center.
The result of this dance might send both storms off
in different directions.
They could be catastrophic for any city or region that
wasn't prepared for a hurricane.
But if one of the Hurricanes is bigger than the
other,
the larger one can absorb the smaller one.
This wouldn't create some kind of mega storm like you
see in the movies,
with astronomical wind speeds and storm surges that wipe out
whole cities,
but two hurricanes combined could still make the hurricane stronger
and longer lasting.
Hurricanes are the most deadly storms,
so increasing their strength can have a massive impact on
people's lives,
on the economy, and on healthcare systems whenever they hit
populated areas.
Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane to hit the United
States so far,
and that was only a Category 3 storm.
A climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Carrie Emanuel, believes that wind speeds in a hurricane could
increase by about 5%
for every 1° increase in tropical ocean temperatures.
A Category 5 storm has winds of
252 kilometers per hour or stronger.
Will we one day have to classify a Category 6
storm?
Let's hope not. But there are other reasons why we
should try to keep the Earth's temperature from rising.
Do you know what would happen if all the world's
ice melted?
Well, that's a story for another
What if?