In 2022, many catastrophic storms that raged up to category 4 intensified as they moved across the Southern Hemisphere. Compared to the Northern Hemisphere, the area is around 24% stormier, yet nobody has ever understood why. Scientists finally have an answer now.
According to University of Chicago researchers, the Southern Hemisphere is particularly vulnerable to storms and cyclones each year because of the ocean circulation and the presence of vast mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.
They also discovered that since the 1980s, when the satellite age first began, this storminess asymmetry has grown.
The findings published in PNAS indicate that the increase in storminess is consistent with climate change forecasts from physics-based models. Researchers said that consistently, the Southern Hemisphere has a stronger jet stream and more extreme weather events than the Northern Hemisphere.
They also observed that the Southern Hemisphere is getting even stormier, whereas the change on average in the Northern Hemisphere has been negligible. The Southern Hemisphere’s storminess changes were connected to changes in the ocean.
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