What makes a storm a hurricane, a typhoon or a cyclone? It comes down to location. They all refer to tropical cyclones — low-pressure circular storm systems with winds greater than 74 miles per hour that form over warm waters — but different terms are used in different parts of the world.
The word “hurricane” is used for tropical cyclones that form in the North Atlantic, northeastern Pacific, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Typhoons are storms that develop in the northwestern Pacific and usually threaten Asia.
The international date line serves as the Pacific Ocean’s dividing marker, so when a hurricane crosses over it from east to west, it becomes a typhoon instead, and vice versa.
The same storms in the Southern Hemisphere are easier to keep straight. In the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea, both in the northern Indian Ocean, they are simply called “cyclones.” In the southern Indian Ocean and South Pacific, they are “tropical cyclones” or “severe tropical cyclones.”
All these storms exist to move heat energy from the tropics toward the poles, helping to regulate climate.
Seasonal differences for storms
Aside from having different names, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones also have different seasons. This year’s Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. The Pacific season started slightly earlier. Typhoons can form year-round but are most common from May to October. The cyclone season in the South Pacific will begin on Nov. 1 and end on April 30.
In the southern Indian Ocean, the season begins two weeks later and ends at the same time except in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where it ends on May 15. Cyclones are concentrated from May to November in the northern Indian Ocean, which has no official season.
Whatever they’re called, tropical cyclones generally become weaker after they arrive on land, since they draw their energy from the evaporation of water in the oceans below them. But they can make it quite far past the coast and wreak havoc through wind damage, torrential rains, flooding and storm surges.
Tropical cyclones around the world are named according to a list maintained by the World Meteorological Organization. The names of the deadliest storms, like Typhoon Haiyan or Hurricane Katrina, are retired.
Grading a storm’s intensity
Hurricanes are categorized 1 to 5 according to the Saffir-Simpson scale, which is based on wind speed. According to the National Hurricane Center, storms in Category 3 or higher, which have wind speeds of at least 111 miles per hour, “are considered major hurricanes because of their potential for significant loss of life and damage.” (Florence was a Category 4 as of early Wednesday.)
Typhoons are monitored by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which classifies them as “typhoon,” “very strong typhoon” or “violent typhoon,” depending on sustained wind speeds. Storms with wind speeds of less than 74 miles per hour are labeled “tropical depressions,” “tropical storms” or “severe tropical storms.”
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center, a United States military command in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, also issues storm advisories using the designations “tropical depression,” “tropical storm,” “typhoon” and “super typhoon.”
Typhoon Jebi, which killed 11 people in Japan, was this season’s third super typhoon, meaning a typhoon with sustained surface winds of at least 150 miles per hour. It is the equivalent of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. This week, Southeast Asia and southern China are bracing for Super Typhoon Mangkhut.
Cyclones in the Indian Ocean are classified according to two intensity scales depending on where they are, with names like “very intense tropical cyclone” and “super cyclonic storm.” Australia rates cyclones from categories 1 to 5.
So why the three different words? Storm terminology has been highly influenced by the histories and cultural interactions of different regions. “Hurricane” appeared in English in the 16th century as an adaptation of the Spanish “huracán.” “Typhoon” is variously described as coming from Arabic (“tafa”) or Chinese (“taifeng”), perhaps both. “Cyclone” was coined in the late 18th century by a British official in India, from the Greek for “moving in a circle.”
But a storm by any other name should still be taken seriously.
Along the back of this field of sugar snap peas, sunflowers and bachelor buttons at Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center is a buffer of maturing big-leaf maples and red-osier dogwoods. It’s a combination of forest and thicket that the farm has left standing to help protect water quality in the river and aquifer. (Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center)
Paul Chisholm
Farmers face a growing dilemma. Specifically, a food-growing dilemma.
How do you feed an increasing number of people without harming the environment?
As it turns out, growing as much food as possible in a small area may be our best bet for sustainably feeding the world’s population, according to new research.
It all comes down to how we manage greenhouse gases and climate change.
People often associate greenhouse emissions with burning fossil fuels, but farming makes a lot of them, too. That’s because farms usually replace natural vegetation, like trees, which store carbon.
Farmers who wish to minimize their carbon footprint have traditionally held two philosophies, says David Williams, the lead author of a paper published last week in the journal Current Biology.
The first philosophy, known as “land-sharing,” involves maximizing the amount of carbon stored on farmland. “This can mean things like planting trees in a field, or maintaining little patches of non-crop habitat on your farm,” explains Williams.
Mumbai’s Juhu beach is strewn with trash at low tide during monsoon season. Floodwaters flush garbage out of the city and into the Arabian Sea. As tides ebb, beaches are blanketed in trash, much of it plastic. (Lauren Frayer/NPR)
From June to September, monsoon rains fall on Mumbai, India’s largest city, delivering relief from stifling heat and vital nourishment to surrounding farmland. But they also bring an unwelcome visitor: Tons of garbage wash up on the city’s shores.
When Mumbai floods, the water flushes waste out of city streets, storm drains and slums and sends it to the Arabian Sea. Then the tides ebb and blanket the beaches in that trash — most of it, plastic.
And now the government is taking action with a ban on plastics.
It’s easy to see the scope of the problem. Joggers, fishermen and families out for a weekend stroll on the waterfront have to clear a path through ankle-deep garbage.
Volunteers and some municipal workers carry buckets of trash to a bulldozer on Mumbai’s Versova Beach. Three years ago, a lawyer who lives near the beach, Afroz Shah, started a cleanup campaign on Facebook and Twitter. (Lauren Frayer/NPR)
Three years ago, a lawyer who lives near Mumbai’s Versova Beach decided he’d had enough.
“The culture of using and throwing away is dangerous. For example, plastic straws. You don’t need plastic straws in your life! They create havoc in a marine environment,” says lawyer Afroz Shah, who launched a cleanup campaign on Facebook and Twitter
I visited Versova Beach last week and saw about 50 volunteers picking up trash – at 7 a.m. on a weekday, in the rain. Among the items raked up and deposited into idling dump trucks: plastic soda bottles, empty chip bags, old sandals, toothpaste tubes, plastic bags — and many, many plastic straws.
A bald eagle flies over its nest in Middle River, Md., in 2009.
Farmers can be painted with a stereotypical salt of the earth wholesome image, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. There’s a dark, selfish, and nasty side to many of them. Here’s one example.
by Vanessa Romo
NPR – June 22, 2018
Robert Edgell has grown accustomed to seeing bald eagles soar over the family farm in Federalsburg, Md., so, when he discovered the carcasses of more than a dozen dead raptors on the property two years ago, he “was dumbfounded,” he told The Washington Post.
“Usually you see one or two soaring over the place, but to see 13 in that area and all deceased. … In all my years, I’d not seen anything like this,” Edgell said.
What could have caused the destruction of so many of the birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, he wondered?
The question was taken up by U.S. Fish and Wildlife authorities, who collected six of the 13 dead eagles. Almost immediately, they suspected poisoning as the cause of death.
They were right.
A 2016 necropsy report only recently obtained by radio station WNAV confirmed all six died after ingesting carbofuran, a pesticide banned by the Environmental Protection Agency beginning in the 1990s.
“Carbofuran was detected in the stomach and/or crop contents of all birds,” the report reads, adding that the pesticide also was found in the partial carcass of a raccoon and fur recovered from the site. Researchers found that five of the six eagles had consumed a recent meal that included raccoon. Other species ingested included marsh rice rat, domestic chicken and deer.
At the time the report was issued, authorities announced they were “intending to close the case in the near future due to a lack of evidence linking anyone to the crime.” No arrests have been made. Killing a bald eagle a felony crime punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
The granular form of carbofuran was banned 1991 partly due the the devastation it wreaked on avian wildlife. Officials estimated it was responsible for killing more than a million birds that mistook the toxic insecticide for grain seeds or consumed small animals that had eaten carbouran pellets. The liquid form was banned by the EPA in 2009.
“Carbofuran is so acutely toxic that animals have succumbed to it with just food in the mouth,” Mourad Gabriel, co-director of the Integral Ecology Research Center, told NPR. “Sometimes we find animals where the food material is undigested — mid-esophagus.”
Gabriel said illegal use of the pesticide by farmers and landowners “creates a vicious cycle of death from even just one poisoning.”
In California, illegal marijuana growers trying to protect their crops from animals are known to set “bait piles” laced with the liquid chemical, Gabriel said. Grey foxes, bears and turkeys there often are the first victims.
“Next come the vultures and other birds who consume the carrion, which later fly away and die some short distance away. Flies then lay eggs in those carcasses, which become poisoned food for other avian birds to feed on.”
John LaCorte, a special agent for the Fish and Wildlife Service told The Washington Post there is an “epidemic on the Eastern Shore” of wildlife-poisoning crimes because people find it “cheaper and easier” than trapping a nuisance animal or predator or building a fence.
La Corte, who spent six months interviewing more than a dozen people in connection to the dead eagles, said the cases are hard to solve because there rarely any witnesses, if any.
“If anyone wants to see things get done about this, they need to be courageous and come forward,” he said.
China’s ban means recycling is piling up at Rogue Waste System in southern Oregon. Employees Scott Fowler, Laura Leebrick and Garry Penning say their only option for now is to send it to a landfill. > Jes Burns/OPB/EarthFix
How ironic, that China, who has been caught red handed tainting everything from pet food to pharmaceuticals, and vitamin and herb supplements, has become oh-so-picky about its recycled imports.
American households, businesses, municipalities do not do a good enough job recycling. Whether its by using outdated inefficient methods for separating, or, by not doing it anywhere near the volume we could be with real dedication. Here in Hamden, there are large communities that do single stream recycling. All kinds of crap thrown in the supposed recycling dumpsters. Really pathetic. Nobody cares. Nobody’s fined. Nobody’s accountable. There’s no excuse for towns to allow single stream recycling anymore. This is a lazy and wasteful cop-out approach to recycling.
Garbage is a daunting issue awaiting us that will eventually cause major global eco stress. Meantime, here’s an impressive video on robotics tackling the sorting challenge…
Recycling Chaos In U.S. As China Bans ‘Foreign Waste’
Like many Portland residents, Satish and Arlene Palshikar are serious recyclers. Their house is coated with recycled bluish-white paint. They recycle their rainwater, compost their food waste and carefully separate the paper and plastic they toss out. But recently, after loading up their Prius and driving to a sorting facility, they got a shock.
Damage caused this month by Typhoon Jebi in Osaka, Japan.
