Clean air could cause hurricanes

London: A decline in industrial pollution across the Atlantic is associated with an increase in the number of deadly storms hitting the coasts of the US and the Caribbean, a new study has claimed.

According to the research by the Meteorological Office, sooty particles, which was generated by industrialisation made conditions not favourable for hurricanes generation, the Independent reported. However, since the 1980s efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to improve quality of air seems to have unleashed natural forces that led to the generation of storms, like Hurricane Sandy that devastated parts of New York, last October, and was the second costliest in the US history. Researchers found that pollutants, spread through the atmosphere as aerosols, cause brightening of clouds, which in turn help reflect more of the sun`s energy into space, which makes it harder to generate storms. However, when the aerosols are removed this brake on storm-generating conditions is released. Dr Nick Dunstone of the Met Office, who led the study, said that since the clean-air acts were introduced in the 1980s, aerosols` concentrations over the North Atlantic have reduced, and model results suggest that this could have contributed to recent increases in numbers of hurricanes hitting the US coast. The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience. ANI