There is also evidence to suggest that tornado patterns have shifted geographically. In other words, tornado events are becoming more clustered. Research has shown that there are fewer days with at least one tornado but more days with over thirty, even as the total number of tornadoes per year has remained relatively stable. While there have been no long-term trends in thefrequency of tornadoes, there have been changes in tornado patterns in recent years. However, other research has found evidence of an increase in tornado power. If anything, there may be a slight decline in the number of very strong tornado events. In fact, when you remove small tornadoes from the record, the data does not suggest any long-term increase in tornado frequency. This makes it hard for researchers to spot any long-term trends because the data is skewed by an increased detection of small tornadoes and tornadoes in sparsely populated areas after Doppler radar networks were introduced. Until then, records relied on eyewitnesses to report tornado sightings, which means that if no one saw a tornado, it would not appear on weather records. It was not until the early to mid-1990s that an extensive Doppler radar network was established in the United States for the detection of tornadoes. Unfortunately, in the United States, tornado records only date back to the 1950s.Īt first glance, there appears to have been an increase in tornadoes since these records began, but that is not the full story. They can also examine official records to see if there have been any changes in frequency and strength of tornadoes over time. To complicate things further, no one fully understands how tornadoes are formed.Ĭlimate simulations can help scientists predict what effect climate change might have in the future. However, this does not necessarily mean that more tornadoes will occur, especially in light of the fact that only about 20 percent of supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes. Some studies predict that climate change could provide the opportunity for more severe thunderstorms to form. These two forces work against each other, and it is difficult to anticipate which might have a greater impact on tornado formation. On the other hand, as the planet warms, wind shear (another vital ingredient) is likely to decrease. This increases atmospheric instability, a vital supercell ingredient. wind at different levels moving in different directions at different speeds, a phenomenon known as wind shear.Īs global temperatures rise, the hotter atmosphere is able to hold more moisture.Instead, scientists must attempt to predict how climate change might affect the individual weather “ingredients” that support the development of supercell thunderstorms (the type that produce tornadoes). This makes them very difficult to model in the climate simulations that scientists use to project the effects of climate change. They are also very short lived, lasting from a few seconds to a few hours as opposed to days or weeks at a time. Hurricanes, for example, can span hundreds of miles, whereas the biggest tornado ever recorded measured 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles) wide. Predicting whether climate change will have an effect on the frequency and power of tornadoes is a challenge.įor all their destructive fury, tornadoes are relatively small when compared to some other extreme weather events. Unfortunately, other weather events, such as tornadoes, are much harder for climatologists to predict. For example, scientists can say with a high degree of certainty that a warming planet will lead to more severe droughts in some areas and heavier rainfall in others. “Extreme weather events” is a catch-all term for a variety of very different weather phenomena, some of which are easier to attribute to climate change than others. Climate change has also caused an increase in extreme weather events all over the world. Global warming is just one symptom of the larger problem of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas, releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere every year, which is leading to a rise in global temperatures, known as global warming. Scientists agree that the climate is changing, and humans are responsible. The resulting tornadoes leave a trail of destruction in their wake, often with deadly consequences. Most of these occur in “Tornado Alley,” an area of the Great Plains region, where the atmospheric conditions are just right for massive, tornado-spawning thunderstorms. Tornadoes have been recorded all over the world, but the United States experiences around a thousand of them each year, which is far more than anywhere else on the planet.
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