Pollution May Be Strengthening Asian Cyclones - Science News
A large and growing brown cloud of persistent air pollution hovering over northern India and surrounding regions has doubled — and occasionally tripled — the intensity of late spring cyclones in the Arabian Sea during the past three decades.
Within the past decade, several notable early-season tropical cyclones have ripped through the region. Gonu, the strongest, smashed through the Middle East in 2007, killing dozens and causing more than $4 billion worth of damage. “This supercyclonic storm was Katrina-like in size and intensity,” says climate scientist Amato Evan of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.