BBC Knowledge Asia Edition

Bill McGuire wonders whether friendly monikers lessen the perceived impact of hurricanes

Have you notived how our weather is
becoming humanised? Until recently, we
might have noted in conversation: “bit windy
last night.” Now we are more likely to hear
something along the lines of: “took a bit of a
battering from that Barney last night,” or “I
blame Bruce Lee myself.” Not only does the
current trend for naming extreme
meteorological phenomena make
discussions of the weather close to
incomprehensible, it also makes the events
sound friendlier and more cuddly.

NAME GAME
This is a dangerous route to go down.
Whether a storm is called Gertrude – the
name awaiting the seventh storm of the UK
winter – or is anonymous, it makes no
difference to its capacity for devastation and
loss of life. Worse, we might take fewer
precautions if we are warned, not of
imminent destructive winds, but of the arrival
on our shores of Katie or Nigel. Take Patricia,
for example. She might sound far too
sensible to cause anyone any problems, but
the reality was very different. Patricia was the
most powerful hurricane ever recorded, and
the most intense western hemisphere storm

of all time. In late October 2015, Patricia

exploded from run-of-the-mill storm into a

full-blown Category 5 hurricane. The core

barometric pressure plunged to an

astonishingly low 879 millibars, driving

encircling winds that reached sustained

speeds of a staggering 325km/h.

Patricia had the potential to cause

massive devastation. Fortuitously, she

weakened rapidly as she approached

western Mexico, and made landfall in a

sparsely populated part of Jalisco state. A

big sigh of relief following the reprieve has

been replaced by growing concern over the

possibility of a future Patricia ploughing into

a densely populated region like Miami or

New York.

HEATING UP

As global temperatures climb, consensus

holds that although overall storm numbers

may not rise, the big ones will become

more frequent. This applies equally to the

events that are fed by the warm waters of

tropical oceans, and to the broadly less

powerful storms that periodically rampage

across the UK and continental Europe

during the autumn and winter months. In

fact, this seems to be happening already,

with five of the seven most intense Pacific

hurricanes making their appearance in the

first 15 years of the new century. In the

Atlantic the pattern also seems clear, with

five of the ten most intense hurricanes on

record occurring since 2004.

FIERCE FUTURE

An inkling of just how bad things might get

is provided by 1979’s Typhoon Tip. As Tip

meandered across the northwestern

Pacific, winds peaked at 310km/h – just a

little lower than those experienced during

Patricia. Tip was a colossal storm with a

diameter of more than 2,000km, but blew

itself out before making landfall. A future

nightmare scenario might involve

increasing numbers of Typhoon Tips

crashing into coastal cities at peak power.

Whether such storms have cuddly names

like Mildred or Maureen will make

absolutely no difference to the devastation

they wreak or the lives they take.

Bill McGuire is Professor Emeritus in

Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL

Should we be naming our storms?

Hurricane Patricia: not

as friendly as she sounds