Clark
(Meteorologist)
Tue Jul 12 2005 11:12 PM
Re: Area of Interest - Central Tropical Atlantic

I'll go ahead and answer it here as well, for everyone's benefit.

Generally, the globe has an energy budget which must be maintained to keep the pole-to-equator temperature difference within reason. It's one of the many great things about this planet, really. One of the major means of doing this is transport from the tropics, where there is an energy "excess," to the midlatitudes & poles, where there is an energy "shortage."

Part of this transport is accomplished by oceanic transport, mid-latitude weather systems, and what we call the Hadley cell (a cross-Equatorial transport mechanism for all sorts of quantities, including energy); much of the rest comes from tropical cyclones. Tropical cyclones are a major source of energy and, upon entering the mid-latitudes, deposit that energy in one way or another -- outflow & convective heating aloft, wind and moisture from the storm itself, and so on. So, in essence, there is a balance that must be maintained...and tropical cyclones are one way about doing so.

I'm not going to comment about global TC activity and how it may relate to the activity here or the overall cycle, as it is something we tend to consider not in specifics but in more vague generalities.



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