Acapulco, the most important tourist site in the Mexican state of Guerrero, was devastated – like other parts of the entity – by Otis, a powerful hurricane that made landfall as a category 5, whose winds of up to 330 kilometers per hour caused unprecedented devastation. .
While the site mourns its dead and looks for a way to get back on its feet, experts worry, because the meteorological phenomenon could be the announcement of the future.
And it began as a tropical storm, but in less than 24 hours it intensified, making the inhabitants of Guerrero unprepared for its arrival. This was reflected in the destruction, the images of which have gone around the world, but beyond. of the human tragedy, experts see that what happened It could be the prelude to what is expected with future hurricaneswhich is caused by climate change.
According to AP, Otis beat even computer models that have been reliable for years, since they did not predict its explosive intensification, which created a nightmare scenario. Acapulco was informed that a tropical storm would pass, but instead the hurricane that has reached the Eastern Pacific with the greatest force made landfall.
Although Otis has been the fastest-evolving hurricane and made landfall with devastating force, it matches a documented trend of hurricanes rapidly intensifying more frequently in recent decades, which is due to warmer water related to the change. climate.
A new trend in hurricanes
Various studies have been carried out on meteorological phenomena and their evolution, but the general consensus among scientists is that increasingly warmer oceans will generate rapidly intensifying hurricanes and this will be seen more and more frequentlyaccording to Univision Noticias.
A study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Earth and Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Kerry Emanuel indicates that rapid intensification at wind speeds greater than 70 mph will likely increase by one in five. in 100 years, while in the 90s the proportion was one in 100.
Another alarming fact is that “the frequency of cyclones with multiple surges in intensity increased significantlyas well as the probability of storms that were believed to be dead regain their intensity,” according to scientists ND Manikanta and Sudheer Joseph, from the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services, and CV Naidu from the Department of Meteorology and Oceanography, Faculty of Science and Technology, Andhra University.
For now, scientists do not know the reason why tropical storms evolve so rapidly, which makes it difficult to study and predict them. During the 2023 hurricane season – which is one month away from ending – the Northeast Pacific had eight high category hurricanesone of them 3, five 4 and two 5. They, together with the storms that intensify quickly, could constitute the new normal, according to Univision Noticias.
Factors that intensified Otis
Otis is the product of climate change, as scientists reveal, but other factors add to its intensification, one of them is the El Niño phenomenon, said the director of the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Jorge Zavala, to UnoTv.
For his part, meteorologist José Martín Cortés said that “the jet stream could also, on the one hand, change the trajectory and, on the other, help it strengthen, due to that strong wind at altitude that resulted in that opening. of the wind, and subsequently its divergence to strengthen it.”
Specialists agree that, at least, three climatic conditions are needed for a cyclone to go from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in less than 15 hours, facts that qualify it as atypical, as occurred with Hurricane Otis.
Keep reading:
– Video: Helicopter flies over Acapulco and shows the devastation left by Hurricane Otis.
– Hurricane Otis leaves 27 dead and severe damage to infrastructure in the state of Guerrero.