氣候變化使颶風變得更強

氣候變化使颶風變得更強

If it seems to you that the massive storms rolling in from the ocean every year are causing more and more damage than the years before, you’re not alone. Scientists are noticing the trend, too and a new study published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) lays out the evidence in stark detail.

如果在你看來，每年從海洋滾滾而來的巨大風暴造成的破壞比前幾年越來越大，那么你并不孤單?？茖W家們也注意到了這一趨勢，威斯康星大學麥迪遜分校和美國國家海洋和大氣管理局(NOAA)的研究人員發(fā)表了一項新的研究報告，詳細闡述了證據(jù)。

With almost four decades of satellite data to go by, the researchers compared the prevalence of particularly damaging hurricanes from year to year, noting a clear uptick in the frequency of major storms.

在將近40年的衛(wèi)星數(shù)據(jù)中，研究人員比較了每年特別具有破壞性的颶風的流行情況，注意到主要風暴的頻率明顯上升。

The trend toward more powerful storms is quite significant. “The change is about 8 percent per decade,” Jim Kossin, author of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, told CNN. “In other words, during its lifetime, a hurricane is 8 percent more likely to be a major hurricane in this decade compared to the last decade.”

強風暴的趨勢相當明顯。發(fā)表在《美國國家科學院院刊》上的這項研究的作者吉姆·科辛(Jim Kossin)對美國有線電視新聞網(wǎng)(CNN)說：“這一變化大約是每十年8%。換言之，在其生命周期內(nèi)，與過去十年相比，本十年內(nèi)颶風成為主要颶風的可能性要高出8%。”

An 8 percent increase in the probability of a major, destructive hurricane on a decade-over-decade basis is absolutely huge. If we extend that out to the future it means we’ll eventually be looking at colossal storms yearly and potentially even multiple high-category hurricanes in a single season. With how long it takes to clean up after such storms (not to mention the lives uproot and lost during the disaster itself), just “dealing with it” will soon be unsustainable.

十年中，一場破壞性的大颶風發(fā)生的概率增加了8%，這絕對是嚴重的。如果我們把這個范圍擴展到未來，這意味著我們最終將看到每年都有巨大的風暴，甚至可能在一個季節(jié)出現(xiàn)多個高級別颶風。風暴過后要花多長時間才能清理干凈(更不用說災難本身造成的人身財產(chǎn)損失)，僅僅“處理它”很快將難以為繼。

As scientists have warned for decades, more powerful storms are still thought to be a direct result of rising ocean temperatures due to man-made global warming. A spike in the water temperatures makes it easier for tropical storms to form. As they churn, they are further fueled by the changes in climate and, when they slam into coastal communities at full force, there’s nothing residents can do but run for the hills.

正如科學家?guī)资陙硭娴哪菢?，更強的風暴仍然被認為是人為全球變暖導致海洋溫度上升的直接結(jié)果。水溫的升高使熱帶風暴的形成變得容易。當它們翻騰的時候，氣候的變化進一步推動了它們的前進，當它們?nèi)σ愿暗貨_進沿海社區(qū)時，居民們除了向山丘跑去外別無選擇。

This study, with its decades of data, draws a very clear link between the changes in ocean temperatures and the likelihood of tropical storms turning into devastating cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons. At the same time, it’s also likely that natural cycles are contributing to the more powerful storms in their own way.

這項研究有幾十年的數(shù)據(jù)，在海洋溫度的變化和熱帶風暴轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)闅缧詺庑Z風和臺風的可能性之間建立了一個非常明確的聯(lián)系。同時，自然周期也有可能以自己的方式促成更強大的風暴。

“Like all aspects of climate, there is an element of natural variability at play,” Kossin explained. “Our study does not formally disentangle the natural causes from the human-activity causes and the trends we found are most likely due to a combination of both.”

科辛解釋說：“就像氣候的所有方面一樣，自然變化也在起作用。”。“我們的研究并沒有正式地將自然因素和人類活動因素分開，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)的趨勢很可能是兩者結(jié)合的結(jié)果。”

Whatever the combination of causes, it’s clear that hurricanes are getting more and more powerful as the decades pass and we’ve done surprisingly little to mitigate the damage they cause.

不管是什么原因造成的，很明顯，隨著幾十年的過去，颶風的威力越來越大，而我們在減輕颶風造成的損害方面做的卻少得驚人。