The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season was one of the most devastating on record, producing storms such as Hurricane Milton and Helene, the latter of which was the deadliest hurricane to strike the US in almost 20 years, killing more than 240 people. Many experts can agree that the root cause of more powerful hurricanes is global warming. Although this won’t be an easy fix, there are everyday actions that you can take to help slow global warming.
A hurricane starts with warm water. This is why most hurricanes are in warmer months and not the winter. Warm water will rise, creating a low pressure system. This system will suck in air from high pressure systems, which will become warm like the rest of the system. When this air cools off, it creates clouds. This system will start spinning, and it will grow by sucking in warm water and heat. When the system becomes more powerful and spins faster, an eye will form. The area right around the eye, called the eyewall, produces the strongest winds of the system. This system turns into a tropical storm at 39 mph. and a hurricane at 74 mph.
Global warming occurs when fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere in processes such as the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Light is radiated off of the sun and it gets transmitted into Earth. It can be absorbed by darker things, but it is mostly re-radiated as heat by things such as snow and ice. Although this would be able to escape back into space, the greenhouse gasses from earlier now trap the heat, thus warming the Earth and the ocean.
Hurricanes start with warm water, and when the Earth’s oceans warm up, the warmer water will create more fuel, so the hurricane will be more powerful and devastating. Warmer ocean temperatures are increasing the number of hurricanes in places where they were more difficult to form, because the ocean temperatures in these areas are now much warmer than they were. This will cause more damage because these new places aren’t prepared to handle a hurricane if it came because it hadn’t happened before.
In conclusion, when Earth’s water temperature increases, the amount and severity of hurricanes will also increase. Although this is a complicated problem to solve, there are everyday actions you can take to slow this process. You can walk or bike to a place instead of driving to it, or you can carpool. Also you can reuse products, and you can turn off the light every time you leave the room. We as individuals can slow this problem by making simple changes.