Law of hurricane power unveiled

London, July 12 (ANI): A recent finding has revealed that the intensity of hurricanes follow a simple mathematical law which could help in foreseeing their reaction to climate change.

Alvaro Corral and his team studied the records of hurricanes from four ocean basins around the world between 1966 and 2007.

For each known hurricane, they calculated how much energy it released, based on the wind speeds and how long the hurricane lasted.

Regardless of region, the researchers found that the proportion of rare, strong hurricanes to more frequent, weaker ones was always the same, regardless of the ocean basin.

Only the very weakest and the very strongest hurricanes did not fit the pattern, called a power law.

It was also found that the proportion of weak to strong hurricanes in each year was similar whether the year was warm or cold, but more of the most powerful hurricanes were observed in warm years.

Corral said that the results hint that, as temperatures rise to levels humans have not experienced before, there will be more of the most powerful hurricanes.

"We don't know what will happen if temperatures go higher than those we have had," the New Scientist quoted Corral as saying.

James Elsner said: "Their results show that you get more powerful hurricanes if the sea surface temperatures are higher."

He added that our best theories of hurricane formation also predict that higher sea surface temperatures lead to stronger hurricanes. (ANI)