WASHINGTON, Oct 24: Strong monsoons in the Indian Ocean can induce easterly winds that push Atlantic Ocean hurricanes westward, increasing the likelihood they will make landfall in the Americas, according to a study.
The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that in years where summer rainstorms in India are stronger, Atlantic hurricanes move further westward towards land.
In years where the rains are not as strong, hurricanes tend to curve northward earlier and fizzle out in the north Atlantic Ocean.
The newly-discovered relationship could help scientists better predict the path of oncoming hurricanes, especially in late summer months like September, when Atlantic hurricane activity peaks, according to researchers.
“What amazes me is how rainfall near India can drive important changes to Atlantic hurricanes half a world away,” said Patrick Kelly from the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
“This research is the first to draw the connection between Atlantic hurricanes and the Indian monsoon,” Kelly said.
The Indian monsoon season has typically waned by September, but climate projections suggest that under future warming conditions, monsoon precipitation will increase, and the monsoon season could end later in the year, researchers said.
As the climate continues to warm, the monsoon could have an increasing influence on the paths of Atlantic hurricanes, according to the study.
“Forecasting for landfall of hurricanes on seasonal timescales is something we just haven’t typically done,” said Benjamin Kirtman, a professor at the University of Miami.
“The thing that is profoundly exciting about this work is its potential to improve seasonal forecasting and predict landfalling hurricanes,” Kirtman said.
Previous research has attributed changes in hurricane steering to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a periodic fluctuation in sea surface temperature and air pressure in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
Scientists have traditionally relied on the La Nina cool phase of ENSO to make predictions about how strong a particular Atlantic hurricane season will be, but have trouble forecasting the paths of individual hurricanes.
“In seasonal forecasting of hurricanes, our biggest predictor of what’s going to happen has typically been La Nina,” Kirtman said.
“Unfortunately, seasonal forecasting based on La Nina has not been able to tell us much about landfall,” he said.
In the new study, Kelly and his colleagues wanted to find out how the Indian monsoon, a known source of climate variability, affected hurricane tracks, since the Indian monsoon had not yet been investigated in the context of Atlantic hurricanes.
They conducted simulations of hurricane tracks with a model that incorporates observed variations of monsoon intensity and found that in response to strong monsoons, hurricanes shifted significantly westward.
Strong monsoons influence hurricane steering by enhancing the effects of the North Atlantic subtropical high, a centre of high atmospheric pressure in the Atlantic Ocean.
When the subtropical high increases, stronger winds come from the east and push hurricanes westward.
According to Kelly, La Nina and the Indian monsoon are correlated, but the strength of the monsoon influences the steering of hurricanes independently of La Nina fluctuations, which are responsible for changes in hurricane frequency.
La Nina fluctuations may result in more Atlantic hurricanes, but strong Indian monsoons steer them further westward, making it more likely they will make landfall in the Americas, researchers said. (AGENCIES)
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CINEMA-ALI
Ali Fazal to star in Pradeep Sarkar’s ‘Arranged Marriage’
MUMBAI, Oct 24:
Ali Fazal has been roped in for Pradeep Sarkar’s next directorial venture, “Arranged Marriage”.
The actor will play the male lead in the film which is a modern-day love story.
The movie will explore the relationships in a family and their involvement during the process of an arranged marriage.
Ali said he is excited to work with Sarkar, whose last release was “Helicopter Eela”, on the project.
“It’s an honour and privilege to work with a veteran director and writer Pradeep dada who has given such powerful and meaningful cinema and has worked with some of the best talents of India cinema.
“… It touches upon some very essential phases of love, relationships, families that are involved in marriage and how important it is that where what these families come from,” the actor said in a statement.
The female lead is yet to be disclosed.
Shooting of the film is currently underway in Kolkata.
Ali will next be seen in Amazon Prime Video web series “Mirzapur”. (AGENCIES)
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SCIENCE-ROBOTS-DISEASES
Cell-sized robots to help detect diseases
BOSTON, Oct 24:
MIT scientists have developed a method to mass produce robots no bigger than a cell that could be used to monitor conditions inside an oil or gas pipeline, or to search out disease while floating through the bloodstream.
The key to making such tiny devices, which the team calls “syncells” (short for synthetic cells), in large quantities lies in controlling the natural fracturing process of atomically-thin, brittle materials.
The process, called “autoperforation,” directs the fracture lines so that they produce miniscule pockets of a predictable size and shape.
Embedded inside these pockets are electronic circuits and materials that can collect, record, and output data, according to the study publised in the journal Nature Materials.
The system, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, uses a two-dimensional form of carbon called graphene, which forms the outer structure of the tiny syncells.
Ranging in size from that of a human red blood cell, about 10 micrometers across, up to about 10 times that size, these tiny objects “start to look and behave like a living biological cell,” said Michael Strano, a professor at MIT.
“In fact, under a microscope, you could probably convince most people that it is a cell,” Strano said.
One layer of the material is laid down on a surface, then tiny dots of a polymer material, containing the electronics for the devices, are deposited by a sophisticated laboratory version of an inkjet printer.
Then, a second layer of graphene is laid on top.
“People think of graphene, an ultrathin but extremely strong material, as being ‘floppy,’ but it is actually brittle,” said Strano.
However, rather than considering that brittleness a problem, the team figured out that it could be used to their advantage.
The system controls the fracturing process so that rather than generating random shards of material, like the remains of a broken window, it produces pieces of uniform shape and size.
There are a wide range of potential new applications for such cell-sized robotic devices, said Strano.
As a demonstration, the team “wrote” the letters M, I, and T into a memory array within a syncell, which stores the information as varying levels of electrical conductivity.
This information can then be “read” using an electrical probe, showing that the material can function as a form of electronic memory into which data can be written, read, and erased at will.
It can also retain the data without the need for power, allowing information to be collected at a later time.
The researchers have demonstrated that the particles are stable over a period of months even when floating around in water, which is a harsh solvent for electronics, according to Strano. (AGENCIES)
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