Introduction

Grade Category: 4-6

Team Size: 1

Subject Area: Earth/Energy/Environmental Sciences (hurricanes)

Project Type: Descriptive

Language: English

My project is about Hurricanes and how we (humans) can effect their severeity.

Software Tools Used: Dream Weaver, Microsoft Word and Fireworks.

Source of idea: (see intro)

A Hurricane By Any Other Name....still causes as much damage.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kathryn and I studied hurricanes and how humans affect hurricanes. The reason I wanted to research this topic was because of the disasters that happen all over the world. I wanted to figure out what was causing the increase of hurricanes that our world has been experiencing.

Here are some questions that I was wondering about throughout the research process.

1. If most of the hurricanes we’ve been having lately formed in the West Pacific, is there warmer water there?
2. Can we do anything as humans to decrease the severity of hurricanes?

Hurricanes start over water and make their way over land. They mostly form over the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico where the waters are warm.. The clouds suck up water vapor and the ocean’s heat. The clouds then get turned counterclockwise by the earth’s rotation, which is also counterclockwise. The ocean must be at least 80 degrees F to start a hurricane. In addition, there must be a weak thunderstorm in order to generate the spin of a hurricane.
		This is an animation of a hurricane.

After a few hours over land, the hurricane weakens. Without the heat and moisture from the ocean, they can no longer produce thunderstorms near the eye.

Winds from hurricanes blow in a big spiral around a calm center known as the “eye”. The “eye” is generally 20 to 30 miles wide, and the hurricane itself may stretch out to 400 miles. A hurricane can bring along torrential (heavy) rains, high winds and storm surges. The eye is the calmest part of the storm. The eye wall is the strongest part of the storm. It has both strong winds and heavy rains.

People in different parts of the world believe that hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes are different. However, scientists believe that they are all the same but they are just given different names depending on where in the world they form.

Hurricanes do have a higher wind speed then tropical storms but they both do equal damage depending on what category they are.

Below are images showing the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

Storm Categories

But the big question is why are hurricanes getting worse each year?

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