Oceans, Hurricanes, and the Climate
SCI 209
Your Name
March 01, 2010

Introduction
Natural disasters occurring from the climate change could be on the rise. Global warming has been rumored to be causing more hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, heavier monsoonal rains that cause major flooding, mud slides, and other disasters worldwide. A tropical cyclone, also referred to as hurricanes, typhoons, or cyclones, depending on where in the world the cyclone is occurring, are one of the world’s grandest shows of energy provided by nature. Hurricanes are large, swirling, low pressure storms that have sustained winds of over 74 miles an hour and are formed over warm ocean waters (NASA, n.d.). The purpose of this paper is to discuss hurricanes and the effect that the ocean has on them.
What Causes Cyclones? Tropical cyclones formed over the Atlantic or eastern Pacific Ocean are called hurricanes and only form in warm waters near the equator (NASA, n.d.). The warm, moisture rich air of these waters is the fuel that hurricanes need to get started and grow. The warm air rises up from near the ocean surface causing a low pressure area to form and air from surrounding high pressure areas rush in to fill the low. The new air that replaced the other begins to heat up and pick up moisture as it rises too. This process is repeated until the clouds build and begin to spin, eventually becoming a gigantic engine, forming lower pressures in its core and sucking up more and more warm, moist, air for fuel (NASA, n.d.). When the sustained winds in the storm get up to 39 miles an hour it is considered a tropical storm and at 74 miles an hour the storm is considered a hurricane.
Determination of a Hurricanes Path Hurricane propagation or the movement of a hurricane is largely steered by the prevailing winds that surround the storm called the environmental wind field. The wind field