Talk:Tropical cyclone/Archive 2

message: A chubasco is not a hurricane in México -or anywhere as far as I know. It is a squall or sudden downpour. It's usually very windy and fast-moving. It can happen anywhere, but it is nothing like to a hurricane when near a shore. A hurricane is a huracán.
*Chubasco is effectively a windy storm, but not always is related with hurricanes. I know it, I'm from Mexico. juan andrés 06:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chubasco not a hurricane 

message: Who thought of nuking a hurricane, and why exactly would it not work?  That's one of the bizarrest things I've ever come across at wikipedia
: I don't know who thought of it, but the basic reason why it won't work is that nuclear weapons aren't powerful enough. From http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html :
"Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x10^13 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 10^13 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane."
: Even if it were feasible, the sheer amount of radioactive fallout produced by such an attempt would be a huge problem, especially considering that you'd be throwing it into the middle of a giant storm that is going to scatter it over a very large area. Colin M. 10:59, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A question 

message: Someone keeps inserting stuff like 
:Some scientists and critics have stated that global warming was responsible for the raise in ocean surface temperatures that caused Katrina to go from a tropical storm to a devastating hurricane as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico between south Florida and New Orleans. "There's no question that the warm waters of the Gulf provided the heat that turned Katrina into a major storm," said Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of books on global warming.  Other scientists acknowledge the possible long term effects of global warming on cyclonogenisis, but attribute the strength of Hurricane Katrina to a 12 year cycle.  
Into hurricane katrina. Info on the formation and powering of hurricanes doesn't belong there.. If this is worth while, can someone merge it here? 24.165.233.150 04:00, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text from katrina on global warming 

message: What was the storm with an eye that ravaged Germany, France, and the UK? Many sites call it Orkan (Hurricane) Lothar and its power was similar to a Category 1-2 hurricane. Does this phenomenon have any relation to hurricanes?
:I'm trying to find more information on it, but based on its date (December 26), it's not likely a tropical storm. According to this PDF, it was an extratropical storm. It may warrant mention, however, both on extratropical cyclone and our section on extratropical storms here, since it's commonly referred to as a "hurricane" (But it's not). That PDF has a satellite image on it, and it has the trademark comma shape of an extratropical storm. --Golbez 00:17, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
Orkan in German seems to refer to any storm with wind speeds exceeding 117 km/h, corresponding to 12 on the Beaufort scale and therefore to a hurricane. But a true hurricane (a tropical cyclone in the North Atlantic) is called Hurrikan in German. Basically, an Orkan can hit Germany, but a Hurrikan/hurricane can't. I don't know if there is a good translation for Orkan in English. "Hurricane-strength windstorm", maybe? --Angr/ 19:28, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: European windstorm seems to be the English for Orkan. --Angr/ 19:33, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orkan "Lothar" 

message: I'm going to hack this section. I've removed:
: Some in the media have stated that global warming was responsible for the raise in ocean surface temperatures that have caused an increase in the number of intense tropical storms in the atlantic.[4] "There's no question that the warm waters of the Gulf provided the heat that turned Katrina into a major storm," said Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of books on global warming.
This is a non-sequitor. Note that the RG quote says nothing about GW, only warm waters. Even if it said GW caused warm waters, it still wouldn't address the first sentence, which is about the *number* of storms.
I also revised the intro somewhat. The intro said, we can't attribute them to GW so we attribute them to natural cycles. This is wrong, logically. You can neither attribute them to GW nor to natural cycles. Also, ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/NATURE03906.pdf is an online publically available PDF. William M. Connolley 19:28:20, 2005-09-05 (UTC).
:Teriffic, ... I'd inserted that section although I regarded it as crap... it was derrived from one of the many examples that people keep sticking into Hurricane Katrina.  The media is doing a pretty good job as usual of misrepresenting the issue to the public. I made a couple of changes to the changed text to further reflect that SST changes may have been caused by many factors, including known and poorly understood ones... I think it needs to be made more clear that Kerry Emanuel's paper isn't really telling us anything new, most of the existing hurricane prediction is based on models where SST drives the storm. The SST->intensity link is a great big duh, and it would have been shocking only if it concluded otherwise. But the news is aparently reporting it like it is a big deal, so we need to take a little more care in our text to clear that misconception. --24.165.233.150 20:26, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Twas I that stated that Emanuels conclusions on SST being related to strength were not new, but it doesn't appear that KE would disagree. The existing models for hurricane strength estimate energy gain by, in large integrating energy gained across the path as a function of temperature ratios. KE's only strong conclusion is that SST is related to central pressure and probably wind-speed. A couple of news articles have gone on to imply that this somehow meant that global warming caused Katrina. It looks like Kerry Emanuel is pretty unhappy about that himself, check out the FAQ on his site . For the record, I'm not the anon in question that added "alleges", .. I can't find the versions with that... But I do feel somewhat guilty for the crufting over here, as I've been punting people who are trying to insert global warming theories into Hurricane katrina over here, where there are editors like you who give a hoot about scientific accuracy... --24.165.233.150 01:38, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

text: NOAA is also a government agency, under an administration that global warming proponents accuse of trying to suppress scientific evidence of global warming in general. Presenting their official conclusion as the final word on the issue seems a bit POV to me. 68.47.234.131 10:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GW bit. 

message: The article says:
: In order to continue to drive its heat engine, a tropical cyclone must remain over warm water, which provides the atmospheric moisture needed. The evaporation of this moisture is driven by the high winds and reduced atmospheric pressure present in the storm, resulting in a sustaining cycle. As a result, when a tropical cyclone passes over land, its strength will diminish rapidly.
I consider the bit in bold dodgy. and reduced atmospheric pressure looks completely bogus to me. But also the driven by high winds bit I doubt: I think that the hurricanes feed on the pre-existing atmos structure: there is no time *during* the storm to re-evap more energy. They die over land because the pre-existing atmos structure has less moisture. Or so I think, but didn't feel sufficiently confident to edit. William M. Connolley 18:58:50, 2005-09-06 (UTC).
: *rerail* There's a very long and detailed heat engine analogy here.  In it, it says "...assuming optimum conditions still prevail..., the feedback process between the release of latent heat, decreasing air pressure at the surface, and increasing surface winds will ultimately upgrade sustained wind speeds to 119 km/hr (74 mph)." However, it doesn't seem to me that it provides details as to why those things increase evaporation.  AySz88^-^ 02:23, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Energy source quibbles 

message: What do these words mean? Is there a translation of the Arabic Tufon?
:The English version, maybe. But definitely not the Chinese version. According to this acount at http://photino.cwb.gov.tw/rdcweb/lib/cd/cd02tyrp/cd_00002.htm, we have the following quote:
:颱風是威脅臺灣最嚴重之自然災害之一….. 颱風一詞由來甚久，根據(周1992)臺灣風雨歲月中之記述，早年因鄭和七次下西洋明永樂三年至宣德五年(1405-1430)經歷之引述，導致阿拉伯航海者選用阿拉伯語tufan (旋轉) 一詞表示颱風現象，至明萬曆年間(約公元1588) 始有英文touffon， 至清嘉慶二十四年(1819) ，現用之typhoon一詞才出現。至於中文颱字最早出現於清康熙二十四年 (1685)編撰之「臺灣記略」及康熙三十三年之「臺灣府志」中，颱風一詞據林紹豪教授的考據，是為閩南語「風篩」演變而來，且早在宋(960-1278)、元(1260-1341)兩代之時，風癡 (或癡風)一詞即已被華南華東航海者普遍使用(按：癡、呆、篩、臺及颱字在閩南方言發音均近似)。
:This means the Chinese record for the word 颱風 (typhoon) already appeared in 1685. Moreover, in the local dialect, the word order was reversed (hong-thai), which is indicative that it has a pre-sinitic origin where the word order was Austronesian-like. This evidence must be taken into account. And as the website points out, the origin of the Chinese term probably goes back to the 10th century, when no Europeans were in the East.
::Not to mention that it's the least interesting part of the article, a lurch into linguistic trivia when we should be getting to the meat of the science, IMHO. I'd like to see the whole section cut or at least moved to the bottom. DavidH 06:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it's probably fine in length, it's fairly short, and can probably be even shorter if we whittled the entymology down to only the verified bits.  Can be moved down though. --AySz88^-^ 16:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. DavidH 17:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology

message: In late December 1988 the Faroe Islands experienced the most powerful storm ever recorded here. As far as I remember, the gusts were up to 277 km/h and at that time many of the wind measurers couldn't withstand the winds and simply fell over. If anyone wants to add this storm, which in terms of wind speeds should be a category 5 (or 4?) hurricane, you could probably get the info needed from the Danish weather service Dansk Meterologisk Institut: www.dmi.dk Mulder1982 04:21, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Faroese Christmas Storm of 1988 

message: In the section "Definition: a heat engine", the caption to the image is oversimplified.
"The air heats up, rising further, which leads to more condensation" is just wrong.  Once the air heats up, there will be absolutely no more condensation of water from _that_ air.  Any water vapor remaining will _not_ condense.  Later in the text of the section, we see that what actually happens is water vapor evaporates from the warm ocean surface into the packet of denser air which displaced the warmer less dense air.  Then this newly evaporated water condenses and heats the packet which expands and gets displaced upward by another packet of cooler denser air.  There are two sources of energy here:  heat from the warm ocean, and the gravitational potential energy of cooler air which has not (yet) been warmed by condensation of water vapor from the warm ocean.
The heat energy from the ocean gets transmitted to the air not by diffusion of heat, but by evaporation of water which forms cool water vapor.  The water vapor mixes with air near the ocean surface.  After a while it condenses (why?  Maybe nucleation by dust?), heating the air.
I think an important point which is not mentioned anywhere in the article is Dalton's law of partial pressure.  When water condenses, the total pressure in the air packet drops because the partial pressure of water dropped.  The temperature of the remaining gas increases, increasing the pressure.  How does this balance out?  I guess the net change is a decrease in pressure, considering that the total pressure drops as hurricane intensity increases.
(I guess this must be an important well known fact of meterology, but I personally never made the connection until very recently between condensation of water leading to lower partial pressure of water vapor vs. the decrease in atmospheric pressure associated with storms.  If there is a section of an article which discusses this, it should be linked to from the hurricane article.)
The gas density decreases:  less water and higher temperature.  Gravity causes the packet of air to rise:  the total gravitational potential energy is lower when heavier objects displace lighter objects.
Where does the condensed water go?  I guess it's obvious that it falls as rain, but the article doesn't come out and say this.
What is different about the eye?  What causes the eye?  What is the humidity in the eye?  I guess since it isn't raining there, the humidity is probably low, which also agrees with low pressure, but surely someone has measured it?
--
I think there ought to be a recitation of the facts about a hurricane and then an explanation of how physical theory explains these facts.  Maybe the explanation would be in other articles.  (I haven't gone looking for articles about displacement of lighter air by heavier air, etc.)  
I thought of this approach when I recognized that I know the pressure in the eye is lowest, that the pressure increases if the hurricane moves over colder water, that it isn't raining in the eye and winds are calm, that it is raining and winds are very high outside the eye wall.
I explain these facts and predict that humidity in the eye must be low:  Originally water condensed, heated the air, the hot air was displaced by denser cold air, more air started moving inward but the Coriolis effect (how do I link to the "Flow around a low pressure area" section?) prevented more cold air from reaching the eye.  Hence the eye must be dry and warm:  the air there was warmed by condensation of water which fell into the ocean, but the Coriolis effect prevented displacement by cooler air so the warm dry air did not rise but stayed in place.  Evaporation from the ocean surface will increase humidity in the layer of air just above the surface, but due to the lack of turbulence in the eye, that humid air will stay in place and the higher air will remain dry because diffusion is much slower than convection.  (Those are my predictions: I don't know for a fact that the humidity in the eye is low or that the temperature is high, and I didn't calculate diffusion rates or anything else).
--
Reading the remark above (Energy Source Quibbles), yes, reduced atmospheric pressure doesn't cause evaporation.  It's reduced partial pressure of water caused by condensation which would permit evaporation.  Suggest changing the wording to reflect this.
Or actually, evaporation and condensation both occur at the ocean surface.  The rate of evaporation will depend on ocean temperature, the rate of condensation on the partial pressure of water in the nearby air.  
The effect of high winds on evaporation:  yes, winds do increase the rate of evaporation, because they move the packet of air into which water evaporated away from the surface and replace it with a packet with lower partial pressure of water.  But the article ought to say this more explicitly.
-- 10:14, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questions about mechanism 

message: However, it is possible for tropical cyclones to form within this boundary if another source of initial rotation is provided. These conditions are extremely rare, and such storms are believed to form at a rate of less than one a century.
Do we have an example of this? 131.111.8.97 13:09, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Typhoon Vamei. —Cuiviénen (Cuivië) 04:55, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  rare hurricanes 

message: For typhoon roughly two possibilities arise, < Arabic < Greek or < Chinese. This is an unsolved issue, a fact that should be reflected in the text. We are not here to re-write history.
In the article on typhōn is also a bit about etymology. We might want to check the consistency and (perhaps) create a separate article on this. Shinobu 14:24, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology (see also Archive 1) 

message: A look at the history shows that someone seems to be repeatedly adding links to "Foxfire Technology" - this appears to be advertising spam. I'm removing all mention of this, as the linked website does not appear to be peer-reviewed and it's a commercial site, please let me know on this discussion page if there are any objections. Dilaudid 10:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: was doing this, I think they've stopped now; please post a note at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress#RU_Moderate if they start again.  It looks like User:Titoxd and I missed some of the links, sorry about that.  Zack 17:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spam 

message: Just curious, why is Hurricane Catarina the main picture on the screen. In my opinion, it should be Gilbert, Wilma, Katrina, Andrew, something strong and impressive looking. I would even be content with a Linda or a Tip, but I just find it curious that the first picture you see is an extremely rare hurricane that isn't very strong that is seen elsewhere in the article. Hurricanehink 02:42, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a good picture. The old one up there was Ivan from the ISS, which I think is a much better picture. If you can find a good PD visual image of those storms you mention (Maybe Mitch - the pic we have of Mitch is amazing) then please tell us. --Golbez 04:11, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Ivan image was too faint; the image of Catarina, on the other hand, is crisp.  Furtheremore, Catarina's appearence from space is textbook, and it's a featured picture. --tomf688{talk} 04:41, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main picture 

message: I remember seeing a thing on TV that said little tornado fingers came out of the outside of the eye wall. I think I remember seeing a film of them. --Gbleem 01:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tornado Fingers 

message: Shouldn't the "Movement and track" section be combined with the "Monitoring, observation and tracking" (and probably "Dissipation" as well)? Good kitty 04:12, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The difference seems to be that "Movement and track" describes the actual movement, while "Monitoring...." seems to be about how people track the storm.  I'm not sure what to do about "Dissipation".  Perhaps things can be reorganized into a "Lifecycle" section? --AySz88^-^ 04:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organization 

message: Hurricane Katrina has been nominated to be improved by WP:IDRIVE. Support it with your vote and help us bring it up to featured standard! Vote here. --Fenice 12:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvement drive

message: Lesser Notable but strong Hurricanes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HurricaneCraze32
My new Article set. I could use your opinion and a couple of things. Some need
pictures.I need a button set cause that ToC is too big.
Anyone?HurricaneCraze32 23:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That discussion is more appropriate to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Tropical cyclones. Jdorje 02:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lesser Known Hurricanes

message: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.71.212.13 (talk • contribs) 17:13, January 23, 2006 (UTC)
: This is in the article.  They're the same as hurricanes except they have a different name in the western Pacific Ocean.  As for what they can do, try Tropical cyclone#Effects. --AySz88^-^ 17:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  what is a typhoon?what can a typhoon do? 

message: Substituted at 20:55, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment