Cyclone Formation 8 Marks Essay

Submitted By nathanmcdonnell
Words: 491
Pages: 2

A tropical cyclone is a powerful storm that develops over warm seas such as the Atlantic and Pacific. They occur around the same time each year in a period after summer roughly in the months of July to October. It is in these months that the seas are warm enough to enable tropical storms to form.
Tropical cyclones go through stages in there formation. The first stage occurs between 50 – 200 north and south of the equator. They only form in these small bands because around the equator the water can heat to a sufficient level to fuel a cyclone, but also because here, the Coriolis Effect is great enough to enable the spinning of the cyclone thus allowing it to develop. They occur where the trade winds converge and often when the ITCZ has migrated to its most Northerly extent allowing air to converge or come together at low levels. However they normally only start to form in late summer when the seas has warmed to above 260C to depths of at least 50m. The warm seas that the winds converge over, heats up the air above and encourages evaporation. The saturated air rises up in thermals creating areas of low pressure. As the air rises it cools and starts to form water droplets and giving of latent heat. Large Cumuli Nimbus clouds form and the storm begins. The rising of the air means that there is an area of low pressure at above the sea. Air from higher pressures come in to balance the pressure difference. This only fuels the cyclone more as this air is too heated and rises.
As the storm develops it starts to spin around the central point of the thermal, known as the eye. This is because of the Earth spinning and it’s Coriolis Effect. Over time the storm gets larger and its