*3.1.2.2 Tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons*

Tropical cyclones are low-pressure centers that are widespread around the northern hemisphere (**Figure 8**) and include both hurricanes and typhoons. The difference is in the strength of cyclones, the stronger ones being referred to as hurricanes in North America and typhoons in Asia. There are divided into seven categories on the Saffir-Simpson scale on the basis of wind speed and strength.

They can vary in size from 100 to 2000 km in diameter. Unlike Monsoons, they move enormous quantities of heat polewards, primarily over the oceans in the Northern Hemisphere (**Figure 8**). Over land, they quickly decrease in strength since they no longer can replenish their heat and moisture from the ground.

**Figure 8.** *Distribution of tropical cyclones between 1945 and 2006 around the world (NASA).*

The strongest concentration of tracks of typhoons and hurricanes occurs along the east coast of Asia, where the warm precipitation is primarily dumped into the warm Kuroshio and North Pacific currents, thus augmenting their transport of heat to the North Pacific Ocean (see **Figure 3**). A combination of the Bering Land Bridge sealing off the connection between the Pacific and Arctic.

Oceans, when sea level drops more than 50 m and these warm currents, explain why the northern part of the Pacific Ocean did not freeze over during the last few glaciations. However, these two warm currents probably played a significant part in supplying the precipitation for Path 1 (**Figure 9**) that provided the relief valve for the Arctic air mass by producing the late (31–10 ka B.P.) glaciation in southern British Columbia. This greatly reduced the area covered by the Arctic air mass, allowing deglaciation of a substantial portion of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets prior to 9 ka B.P. [52]. Currently, the typhoons affecting the Philippines are becoming more extreme [53]. A few typhoons also occur around the shores of India and near the Persian Gulf, but they are relatively infrequent.

South of the ITCZ, a band of Typhoons is found on the north coast of Australia west to Asia and Madagascar. They are mainly found over the Indian Ocean, but northern Australia and Queensland depend on the Monsoon rains from December to February to provide sufficient water for agriculture [54]. In El Niño years, there is increased precipitation whereas La Niña years result in shorter rainy seasons and drought. Similarly, Madagascar and the adjacent coast of southeast Africa depend on the tropical cyclones to provide enough water to sustain the seasonal growth of forest species. In all these areas, the monsoons cool down the land somewhat

#### **Figure 9.**

*Map showing the distribution of permafrost in the Arctic [37] together with the mean surface air January isotherms (°C) and the adjacent warm and cold ocean currents. Also shown are the three main paths (I–III) taken by the Arctic air as it moves from Asia to northern Canada, and the positions of the main warm ocean currents currently bringing heat from the Tropics.*

#### *Causes and Mechanisms of Global Warming/Climate Change DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101416*

along the margins of the adjacent deserts and/or semideserts. Over the ocean, these typhoons add heat to the underlying sea and may help supply heat energy to the warm surface thermohaline currents in the Indian Ocean.

The second-most concentration of hurricane tracks is found along the eastern side of North America, originating in the tropical Atlantic north of the ITCZ. These are becoming more numerous, of greater strength, and with high category numbers. They bring enormous amounts of heat and energy northwards with much of the precipitation falling into the Gulf Stream, thus adding to the heat energy bathing the east coast of the United States as well as the western shores of Europe. The warm currents enter the Arctic basin spreading westwards to eastern Greenland and eastwards towards Nova Zemla. The Arctic sea ice cover has been thawing since about 1920 (see Section 3.1.2.4 below) and Duk-Rodkin *et al.* [55] found evidence in the form of glacial and interglacial deposits on the eastern slopes of the Mackenzie Mountains that the Arctic Ocean had become ice-free prior to each of the last five glaciations. From then on, the Arctic air mass traversing the ocean will pick up moisture, increasing the salt content of the ocean in which case the water will tend to sink and later possibly take part in the deep-water thermohaline exchange.

#### *3.1.2.3 General movement of air masses*

The air masses can be divided into three main groups, *viz.*, the Equatorial air masses, the tropical air masses, and the Arctic air mass. As noted previously, the Equatorial air masses receive the most isolation and get sucked both north and south of the ITC to enter the dry, hot zone of the Horse Latitudes characterized by deserts on the land areas. The hot, dry desert surface heats the tropical air mass which forms an anticyclone over it, and the descending air then moves upwards and polewards or back along the surface to the Equator (**Figure 10**).

Each air mass operates as a distinct band around the globe, interacting with the others primarily along the boundaries between the air masses. Details of the operation of the Arctic air mass and its relationship with the tropical air mass will be found in [52]. It will be seen that the coldest air originates in northeast Siberia by reradiation of heat energy during the long, dark winter days. In cooling, it would

#### **Figure 10.**

*North-south section through the lower atmosphere in western North America showing the circulation of the air masses under the climatic conditions occurring in 1980 A.D. [13]. Note that there are three basic air masses, viz., the Arctic, Tropical, and Equatorial, with jet streams along their margins. The more northerly black line marks the polar front, and the southern one is the subtropical front separating the tropical air (in orange) from the equatorial air mass (in red). The gray arrows indicate the air movement in the upper atmosphere.*

deposit the excess water vapor as snow. The daily temperature can reach −66°C and stay there for several days before the air mass moves eastwards along the paths II and/or III in **Figure 9**. During the last major glaciation, paths II and III were followed to build up the Laurentide ice sheet. The cold air moved into northern Canada after picking up both heat and moisture crossing the Arctic Ocean. On arrival over the cold land, it cooled again by reradiation to become dense enough to push its way south, forming a lobe as it moved the tropical air out of the way, undercutting it and causing heavy snowfalls as the tropical air-cooled. This is the origin of the Rossby waves. **Figure 11** shows the evolution of the Rossby waves as they move eastwards.

When the Arctic air moves over the open warm water of the North Atlantic Ocean, it warms enormously while picking up large quantities of water thus aiding in the salinization of the surface seawater. Under the present climatic situation, it ensures that the northwest of Europe receives the warm, moist air at latitudes between southern Norway and central France with only relatively minor cold snowy spells in winter. It continues eastwards, cooling as it reaches the more continental parts of Central Europe, slowly modifying into dry, cold winter weather before it crosses the Urals and moves back to join the source area in NE Siberia.

#### **Figure 11.**

*Evolution of the southern edge of the Rossby waves as the cold air mass (in blue) moves eastwards [56]. H represents a high air pressure cell (an anticyclone) while L represents one of low pressure (a cyclone). Arrows show the direction of air movement while the Arctic Air mass is indicated in blue.*

*Causes and Mechanisms of Global Warming/Climate Change DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101416*

The tropical air of the semideserts and deserts on all the continents except Antarctica moves atmospheric heat polewards, *e.g.*, the Sahara, the Tibet-Plateau and Pamir Knot, the arid regions of the southwest United States and central Australia. If the supply of heat from the Equatorial regions increases, they expand into the surrounding areas. In Africa, the tropical air occupies today the vast Sahara desert and the semi-desert and savannah lands of the Sahel. The latter represents the transition zone between the desert in the north and the Equatorial and Monsoon lands of the west coast. The Sahara desert is tending to expand since the precipitation decreased in 1968, and the Sahel now has a more marked season [57, 58]. The Sahel-like conditions continue through Southern Sudan along with the interior of East Africa, but the precipitation there has decreased and become less reliable. In dry years, the anticyclone over the Sahara expands with the dry desert air extending over Italy, sometimes crossing the Alps to descend on to the north German Plain as a Foehn wind. This results in partial drying up of the Rhine River making it difficult for navigation. In East Africa, this expansion produces crop failure and famine, along with swarms of locusts.

#### *3.1.2.4 Effect of sudden movements of large air masses*

The coldest winter temperatures recorded in the northern hemisphere were obtained in the interior valleys of the mountains in northern Siberia at Verkhoyansk located at 67°33′N, 133°23′E. (−67.8°C on January 15, 1885), and equally cold temperatures were recorded at Oymyakon (located at 63°15′N, 143°09′E). These are sometimes referred to as the northern poles of cold. Similar cold temperatures (−65°C) have been recorded in a cold air drainage event in a mountain valley 100 km west of Fort Nelson, British Columbia [59]. These are still considerably warmer than the higher altitude stations inland in Antarctica.

In 2018, many stations in Antarctica experienced record colder temperatures, some 14°C colder than the previous record. The new current record low is −98°C at 81°S, 63.5°E. measured on the East Antarctic Plateau [60]. The bulk of Antarctica experienced a similar increase in cold, indicating that a considerable quantity of heat energy failed to go south during the Antarctic winter months. Since the deficit was near the South Pole, that missing energy must have gone north to the equatorial zone. This, in turn, would have upset the equilibrium between the Equatorial zone and the poles, and cause enhancement of the processes moving heat polewards from the Equator, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere.

This change appears to have triggered two particularly large, wide hurricanes that traveled along the East coast of North America dumping unusually large quantities of warm water into the Gulf Stream There was also a considerable increase in the number of Atlantic Hurricanes both in 2019 and 2020, and the hurricane season started earlier and lasted later than previously. The summer of 2019 saw unprecedented melting of the east side of the Greenland ice sheet which Tedesco and Fettweis [61] have tried to explain by changes in the atmospheric conditions over the Greenland ice sheet. This was also the time of the disappearance of the warm water from the Atlantic Ocean near the east coast of the United States, which has since been found near the west European coasts (**Figure 5**). The warm waters now go further north and bathe the northeast shores of Greenland and they may also be a cause of the exceptional melting of the ice sheet in 2019. The early arrival of the hurricanes in Quebec and New Brunswick meant that the warm rain fell on the remains of the isothermal winter snowpack resulting in major floods on the St John River and its tributaries. This resulted in exceptional flooding in many lowland areas.

In the case of the arid and semiarid areas, lack of precipitation caused by the expansion of the arid zone set up the conditions for large fires in Australia, Siberia, and the west coast areas of the United States. The wildlife was greatly affected in Australia, both by being caught in the fires and by the loss of suitable habitat. Expansion of the dry conditions in the Sahara and Sahel resulted in widespread famine in East Africa with the Victoria Falls dwindling to a trickle. Hordes of locusts compounded the problems in Somalia and Southern Sudan. In southern Europe, the drought severely affected the crops, *e.g.,* in Italy. In India, the Monsoon brought exceptionally heavy rains that resulted in\very difficult conditions for the inhabitants of the lowlands.

The most striking change that has occurred after the southern winter temperatures of 2019 is the enormous increase in the amplitude of the Rossby waves affecting the climate over the Northern Hemisphere, particularly North America. These waves have doubled in amplitude and resulted in remarkable changes in the autumn and winter weather. The western Prairie Provinces of Canada have also had exceptionally warm weather from mid November 2020 until late January 2021. The cold lobe of the Polar Vortex has missed this area but hit the Central and Southern United States and eastern Canada with heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures. Clearly, the lobes of extratropical heat have clashed with the Polar air mass-producing very high-pressure gradients extending far further south than usual.

From these results, it seems that any sudden movement of large quantities of energy to the equator has a very significant effect on the climate of the land areas particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also bring about significant changes in the waters of the North Atlantic, probably speeding up the preparation of conditions suitable for a major seesaw exchange with the southern oceans.

#### **3.2 Effects of mankind altering the processes of heat transfer**

In general, the effects of the works of man in altering heat transfer between the hemispheres are both relatively puny and gradual. The processes discussed above are abrupt [62] and are not particularly susceptible to modification by humans. The main exception is the addition of heat artificially brought up from within the Earth during oil extraction from deep wells in Alaska [63]. The celebration commemorating the naming the Yakutsk Permafrost Research Station after Pavel Melnikov indicates that on completing studies at the top Russian School of Mines in the 1920s, he was posted to a head-up an Institute on Novo Sembla with the task of finding a way to thaw the sea ice along the Arctic coast of Russia. The heat from the oil and gas coming from within the ground needed to be largely removed prior to pumping through pipelines and could be used to thaw the ice. Within 8 years, he was appointed head of the fledgling Gas Prom which he continued to direct until his death. He also became President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Under his guidance, many wells were situated near the Arctic coast and the pipelines were buried but not insulated in permafrost areas. They regularly float to the surface (see Figures 15.6 and 15.9 in [37]).

The end result for Russia was the establishment of a through route for shipping between European Russia the Orient after about 1990 A.D. This saved cargo vessels from having to go from Murmansk, around northwest Europe, and through the Suez Canal to get to the Orient. The effect of thawing the Arctic Ocean is that the open water will absorb more heat and so risk speeding the day when the warm saline waters of the North Atlantic Ocean take off south towards Antarctica and are replaced by cold Antarctic waters, thus precipitating a new cold event in the northern hemisphere. That would cause far greater problems for mankind than we face now.

A second problem is gas flaring. Around 2000 A.D., Russia flared off approximately 10 times the amount of natural gas as any other country. In 2009, the

#### *Causes and Mechanisms of Global Warming/Climate Change DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101416*

Associated Petroleum Gas countries agreed to reduce the output of flared gas by 95% by January 2012. Unfortunately, Russia failed to meet these standards [64] although there had been a vast improvement. The effect of flaring is that it directly heats the passing Arctic air and combined with the geothermal heating of the air by the oil and gas in the pipelines, it causes a rise in the mean annual air temperature


*Source: World Bank Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Gas flaring volumes for 2015–2019 by country in billion cubic metres [65].*

#### *The Nature, Causes, Effects and Mitigation of Climate Change on the Environment*


#### **Table 2.**

*Table showing the number of buildings showing structural damage in various Russian towns and cities located in areas of permafrost that will eventually result in the buildings being uninhabitable (from [66–69]).*

in proportion to the oil and gas production in unit time. The latter cannot readily be predicted in advance, so cannot be suitably planned for in construction work.

Subsequently, Russia has successfully reduced its flaring by 2015 to lower levels (**Table 1**), but the unfortunate consequence in Russia was the damage to the infrastructure by the warming of the Arctic air mass. Most of the BAM railway across Siberia has had to be rebuilt due to thawing of the permafrost beneath the track, and similar problems have plagued the road network. **Table 2** shows the number of buildings that showed structural damage in various Russian towns and cities located in areas of permafrost that will eventually result in the buildings becoming uninhabitable. While some are near oil wells or the Arctic coast, others such as Yakutsk are far to the east of the main oil-producing regions.
