the curiosity about The hurricane comes from small. Having lived a couple of years on the outskirts of Florida, a region highly affected by the cyclones, sparked his passion for what he defined as: “machines that convert the warmth of the oceans in wind”. Kelly Emanuel (Ohio, 1955) has received on Wednesday the award Frontiers of Knowledge in the category of climate change from the BBVA Foundation, precisely because of their watchful eye and visionary with respect to cyclones. Their predictions of the end of the eighties, today there are data that demonstrate that the warming intensifies hurricanes and typhoons. “It is not something that can happen. Is going on”, through a video conference from his residence.
Question. You receive the award for demonstrating a correlation between climate change and increased intensity of hurricanes, but how does it affect you?
Response. To the end of the eighties I developed a theory that analyzed the speed of the hurricane and how they were increasing. I was surprised to discover that the warming of the earth’s temperature will cause this speed to grow. Today, this issue is a serious concern.
MORE INFORMATION
The meteorologist Kerry Emanuel, Frontiers of Knowledge award in climate change What is a ‘medicane’?
Q. What is planned for the future?
A. societies have adapted surprisingly well to events such as hurricanes, earthquakes or storms, that occur once every 100 years. But everything is complicated when the times between one and the other are reduced; when on time of every 100 are given every 50 years. Societies are not prepared for what was known as isolated cases. The increase in the speed of the wind, no matter how modest, can cause great destruction.
Q. what kind?
A. Terrible. Some years ago I participated in a study on the economic impacts of these disasters in the united States and I figured I’d pose 80,000 million dollars a year (about 72,000 million euros). And only in the united States. In addition, there is the human factor: people are migrating to coastal areas more prone to typhoons and the losses are huge. Just look at the figures of deaths from the hurricane in the Bahamas or the Philippines. Hurricanes are sources of immense suffering. And we are witnessing the collision between a demographic trend, and a trend climate of hurricanes in the process of being strengthened. There is something that people have to understand: the change is already happening. Three different groups of research estimated that the probabilities of rainfall in Texas during the 2017 to reach the magnitude of hurricane Harvey were the triple of parameters 15 years ago. And this is relevant in both the insurance are decided in function of the historical. Historical that are no longer responding to reality.
Q. You are very critical of the international community
A. that is unfortunate. It makes No sense to wait more. There are two measures which have to be taken as: reducing carbon and promoting research in technologies that extract the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere.
Q. And yet, there are politicians who deny global warming.
A. Yes. It is horrible. Happens in Australia, happens in the united States… The politicians are older people who are doing deaf ears of the measures that are pleading for the young ones. I wish these movements to grow and to propagate. We have to start to listen less to the deniers and more to our children.
Q. Another of his predictions are about the expansion of these phenomena, which are not produced before. Do you come to Europe?
A. Although we don’t have all the answers yet, there are many indicators that show that phenomena like hurricanes threaten the coast of western Europe. The case of the Mediterranean is very curious, because we produce similar storms are called “medicanes”. And it seems that these will also be identified. Perhaps not in frequency but in intensity.
Q. what regions of Spain affects specifically?
A. Not to the entire peninsula. More to the Balearic islands. I spent a year researching, together with Romualdo Romero [professor of Meteorology at the Universitat de les Illes Balears], these phenomena, and we observed that these islands occasionally have been severely affected. The question we ask now is whether they will get worse.
