A new study suggests that the successful efforts in North America and Europe to reduce air pollution have led to an unintended consequence—more hurricanes.
The “surprising result” was found by Hiroyuki Murakami, a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In his paper, published in the journal Science Advances, Murakami said he studied hurricane trends in the northern hemisphere over the past 40 years and discovered a connection between the number of hurricanes and the amount of air pollution in the form of tiny particles called aerosols.
Almost 90 percent of aerosols released into the air have natural origins like volcanoes and forest fires, while the remaining 10 percent come from human activities, such as manufacturing cement and burning coals. The NOAA study examines data from two periods: 1980 to 2000 and 2001 to 2020, during which North America and Europe significantly cut down their output of human-caused aerosols.
…