What are cyclones? What are the damages caused by a cyclone?
Answers
Very strong winds may damage installations, dwellings, communication systems, trees., etc. resulting in loss of life and property. Heavy and prolonged rains due to cyclones may cause river floods and submergence of low lying areas by rain causing loss of life and property.
Cyclone, any large system of winds that circulates about a centre of low atmospheric pressure in a counterclockwise direction north of the Equator and in a clockwise direction to the south. Cyclonic winds move across nearly all regions of the Earth except the equatorial belt and are generally associated with rain or snow.
There’s no single cause which results in a cyclone, but it’s a chain of events that finally ends up as a Cyclone.Let’s analyse those chain of events one by one :
• A large warm and still ocean area with temperature above 27ºC formed. Due to this, the air above these area get heated and therefore it rises up.
• The risen air, would make vacancy of air in that region i.e low pressure area.
• The air around rushes to fill that vacant area.
• The air when it rises would also carry a great amount of moisture in the atmosphere, i.e the water evaporated and turned into vapour is also carried with the air.
• This moist air on reaching some height, cools down, condensation happens and clouds are formed.
• The above said processes continues and eventually the clouds became heavy.
• The resulting condensation would release latent heat, that would again heat the water in those area. Hence it acts like a self-feeding mechanism.
• The air that arrives from vast areas to this area of low pressure in the form of wind, would get deflected and eventually twists due to Coriolis effect.
• The cyclone is formed.
It is caused by a combination of strong winds driving water onshore and the lower atmospheric pressure in a tropical cyclone. In the southern hemisphere the onshore winds occur to the left of the tropical cyclone's path. Tropical cyclones are like giant engines that use warm, moist air as fuel. That is why they form only over warm ocean waters near the equator. The warm, moist air over the ocean rises upward from near the surface. Because this air moves up and away from the surface, there is less air left near the surface.