Discussion: 2017 Major Hurricanes

Research and present to the class:

Formation; when and where

Hurricane maximum windspeed, category, storm surge heights

Where it made landfall and at what category. (Name the 3 regions hit most severely)

Estimated damage, death toll

Cause of the majority of damage (i.e. winds, storm surge, rainfall etc.)

Was there an evacuation? Was it effective?

How was the response from the federal government after the disaster?

What was unique or unusual or particularly devastating about this hurricane?

Killer Hurricanes -

In the first set of videos, we see time-lapse videos of the 2005 hurricane season. Answer the following 2 questions:

1. What appears to be the common factor that underlies all successful hurricanes?

2. Why do the hurricanes appear to be restricted to a certain period of the year?

Let's go back and retrace their logic in developing this hypothesis.

1. Working with only the historical data, scientists were able to make estimates that the hurricane of 1780 was more powerful that any hurricane that we have experienced in recent times.

What two types of evidence did they obtain from historical data?

2. List the three conditions that must be in place for a powerful hurricane to occur.

3. What was the estimate that modern scientists have made based on this evidence for the 1780 storm:

A. What the intensity (Category #) _____________

B. What was the diameter?

C. What was the storm surge?

4. What tools and technology are available to study hurricanes in the present day?

5. Determining the frequency of hurricanes in the past.

a. Explain how they do Sediment Analysis from a blue hole. Explain what the blue hole is, and why it's an effective tool for studying dates of previous hurricanes. Explain how this analysis is done.

b. What did the evidence show about the frequency of hurricanes for the past 1400 years?

6. Determining the relative sea surface temperatures.

When looking at the data from the analysis above, they noted a dramatic shift in the hurricane frequency in the Caribbean Sea. They wondered what had caused this change. They realized that one of the important conditions for a hurricane to form is that the water in the top 200 feet of the ocean needs to be especially warm, compared to the cooler water below the surface. They developed a hypothesis that the change in hurricane frequency was correlated to a change in the surface temperature of the ocean during the same period. They developed a very accurate chart of relative year-by-year ocean temperatures by measuring the cores of sediment from ocean coral reefs.

a. How did they know what the relative temperature of the water was, year-by-year, based on the coral layers?

b. What did the data show about sea surface temperatures?

c. Why do they relate that to global warming?

7. They took their hypothesis a step further to show that an increase in ocean temperature is correlated with a greater frequency in hurricances, not only in number, but also in intensity. Explain their logic and/or evidence to propose that the intensity of hurricanes near large population centers on the east coast of the US will become greater in the future.

Attachment:- Assignemnt Files.rar