They don’t go on forever otherwise the earth would be covered in them right?!
In: Planetary Science
They are fueled by warm moist air so going over land weakens them severely and going further away from the equator drives them to cooler water.
They can only maintain their strength over the ocean and warm ocean water powers them. As soon as part of them are over land they lose power. When they are mostly over land they wind dies out.
Moving north over colder ocean water also weakens them.
The Pacific ones tend to get stronger since they have more warm ocean water to develop with, but the Atlantic is getting really hot now.
They mostly happen in late summer and fall since the ocean water is warmer then. As the climate heats up hurricane season will definitely get longer, but it won’t be year round.
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Hurricanes are fueled by warm water. When they drop into warmer waters (usually in the tropics) they get stronger. When they enter cooler water away from the tropics or make landfall, the storm looses intensity (heat) and eventually breaks up.
Hurricanes also follow ocean currents. The Atlantic gulf stream pulls warm water from the tropics up along Florida so storms intensify before landfall on the eastern seaboard. on the west coast, the ocean current pull down cold water from the arctic regions, so it’s rare for Hurricanes to make landfall in California since they weaken. Plus the trade winds blow the storms out into the pacific towards Hawaii, Guam and Japan.
Think about it this way: why does a fan stop turning if you unplug it?
Because without a source of energy to keep it going, the kinetic energy within the fan is gradually bled away by friction with air and its own parts, until there’s none left and it stops.
Same thing with weather systems. They’re far more complex, of course, but the energy comes from somewhere. For hurricanes, that somewhere is primarily warm ocean water. As soon as the storm moves over land or over colder water, it no longer has a source of new energy to keep it going, so the energy already in the system gradually dissipates through natural forces.
Tropical cyclones (also called hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, typhoons in the western pacific, or cyclones in the Indian Ocean) form from a combination of warm ocean water and strong winds. Without the warm ocean water providing more energy it will eventually weaken and break apart. Moving over colder water or over land basically does that.
Unfortunately for the victims of tropical cyclones the energy that has been pumped into the storm has to go somewhere and that somewhere is in the destructive winds and rain of the storm.
hurricanes are like that one friend who gets tired after a wild party. they run outta warm water and energy then just kinda fizzle out. dude they can’t go forever
hurricanes lose steam when they hit land or cold water. it’s like they just run outta gas. thank goodness tho or we’d be swimming everywhere
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