George Navarro
Hurricane Katrina Cycle A: Team
17, October, 2007
The earth’s atmosphere is greatly responsible for the creation of hurricanes. Coupled with low atmospheric temperature and the ocean’s moist and relatively warm surface, a hurricane is the result of high and low pressures that are created by this difference. The atmosphere and the hydrosphere operate hand in hand when the heat from oceanic moisture transfers to the atmospheric gas in the form of energy to propel a hurricane. According to Sample (2003) “the ocean waters must be warm enough at the surface to put enough heat and moisture into the overlying atmosphere to provide the potential fuel for the thermodynamic engine that a hurricane becomes” (Tropical Twisters, para. 1). Essentially, hurricanes are huge heat engines, converting the warmth of the tropical oceans and atmosphere into wind and waves.
Once the hurricane is created it moves from its origin in the North Atlantic Ocean to the South-eastern coast of the United States. The storm touches down on land and releases its energy and as a result we see destruction. Hurricane Katrina is described as the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. The storm’s energy is transferred from the ocean’s surface to the earth’s atmosphere. The energy then travels in the form of a storm until it hits the coast. According to Taber and Urban (2006), “we can use the law of conservation of energy to estimate how much energy is in a hurricane” (p. 359). When evaporation is taking place, i.e. from the oceans surface into the earth’s atmosphere, it is said that there is a positive latent heat flux, or a transfer of energy from the location of the liquid (hydrosphere) to the location of the gas (atmosphere). Energy transfer is one major result of the interaction between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere.
What causes the beginning of the atmospheric changes that then yields a subsequent chain of events?
How does global warming contribute to the atmospheric changes that have theoretically caused more frequent hurricane activity?
What other disruption does a hurricane cause other than destruction that we as human being perceive as economic loss?
Sample, S. (2003) Tropical Twisters, Hurricanes: How They Work and What They Do. October, 16, 2007.
Taber, J., Urban, T. (2006). Air-sea Exchange in Hurricanes: Synthesis of Observations from the Coupled Boundary Layer Air-Sea Transfer Experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 88, 3 p. 357-74.