Tropical cyclones don’t move as fast as they used to.
The fierce, swirling storms move 10 percent slower, on average, than they did nearly 70 years ago, a new study finds. Such lingering storms can potentially cause more damage by dumping even more rainfall on land beneath them.
Atmospheric scientist James Kossin examined changes in how quickly tropical cyclones, known as hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, moved across the planet from 1949 to 2016. Storms slowed at different rates depending on the region, with the biggest changes seen in the Northern Hemisphere, Kossin reports in the June 7 Nature.