Migrating cyclones pose new threat

Eco-Business via Climate Science News Network: Tropical cyclones – hurricanes in the Caribbean, typhoons in the South China Sea – are moving further north and south, threatening to create new havoc in unsuspecting coastal areas.

New research published in the journal Nature reveals that, on average, the storms have been migrating towards the poles at the rate of 53 kilometres a decade in the northern hemisphere, and 62 kilometres in the southern.

This means that landfalls that in the past that would not have expected violent storms will become increasingly at risk − “with obvious effects on coastal residents and infrastructure”, the paper says.

Jim Kossin, an atmospheric research scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and colleagues looked at data for the last 30 years and measured the latitudes as which storms reached their peak intensity. They found an uneven but measurable shift of around half a degree of latitude every 10 years.

The news makes sense, as researchers have previously identified a steady “expansion” of the tropics as a result of global warming....