As the planet warms, we should expect to see more such storms

Oct 31, 2012 10:37 GMT  ·  By

Following an account of how and why hurricane Sandy got this powerful, the time has now come for a more detailed explanation of how global warming caused and fueled this hurricane's aggressive nature.

Apparently, what pushed hurricane Sandy over the edge and thus caused it to wreak havoc on the US East Coast is a natural phenomenon most people are already quite familiar with: the melting of the Arctic sea ice during summer.

Writing for the Scientific American, specialist Mark Fischetti explains that this melting of the Arctic sea ice toys with the atmospheric pressure in this part of the world.

The result: disturbances in the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO, for short).

In case anyone was wondering, this NAO is basically a fancy phrase used to describe the difference in atmospheric pressure at sea level between the Icelandic low (i.e. a semi-permanent center of low atmospheric pressure) and the Azores high (i.e. a semi-permanent center of high atmospheric pressure).

Anyways, it seems that this NAO can be either negative or positive, depending on the differences between said Icelandic low and Azores high.

Apparently, a negative NAO, which is more likely to manifest itself when Arctic sea ice melts, sends a cold Jet Stream towards Canada and the US.

Thus, an increase in the rates at which the Arctic sea ice is melting fueled this cold Jet Stream, which in turn added to hurricane Sandy’s ability to destroy almost everything in its path.

Thus, the warm temperatures of the Atlantic were the first to up this storm's strength, and said cold Jet Stream played its part in taking things to a whole new level.

As well as this, Mark Fischetti points out that, as a result of warmer oceans and the earth's atmosphere retaining ever more moisture (both of which come as a result of global warming), the possibility of such big storms being formed on a regular basis in the future is considerably increased.

"Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change."

"To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change," James Hansen from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York recently told members of the press.