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The benefits of cyclones

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Today's Satellite Map...

False colour temperatures, Australia East satellite image of Australia at Thu Mar 12 00:30:00 2015

Now - I know that cyclones can cause major destruction and have an enormous impact on the surrounding population, but we don't often discuss the benefits. I wanted to touch on a few that we experience here in Tropical North QLD.

A stack of good rain - cyclones need a couple of main ingredients: thunderstorms and a warm body of water (27ºC minimum which the thunderstorm gathers it's energy). The ocean under the thunderstorms evaporate and condense to form clouds and rain, releasing heat throughout the process. 

The outcome is a truck load of rain!

A lot of the cyclones QLD has had in the last 40 years have been relatively small, but intense. Yasi was an obvious exception, being large and intense. The rainfall generated out of cyclones can provide enormous benefits to the surrounding regions. We can get inches of rain each day... for days on end which is perfect for tropical flowers. It also loads up the soils with deep water stores - providing a great reserve for the next month. The soils are used to this hammering of water and just soak it up!

Our tropical plants thrive in hot, humid conditions so having a good base of moisture is so good for our wet season. 

Balancing the Heat - Tropical cyclones help to maintain the balance of heat by spreading it out across the planet. Although the rain cools the temperature in the vicinity of the cyclone by a few degrees, cyclones transfer a huge amount of warm tropical air from the equator towards the North and South poles. Without this transfer, the tropics would continue to get hotter and the poles would continue to get colder so they are critical to keeping things in balance. 

According to symetweather.com -  a typical tropical cyclone releases heat energy of about 50 to 200 exajoules a day. That's equivalent to 70 times our daily worldwide energy consumption.

Other benefits you may not know about - Sea life benefit greatly by cyclones, mainly through the flushing out of estuaries and river channels. It provides food and breeding grounds through this process. 

Lastly - small reef islands are built up by the deposit of new sediments through wind and waves. They would likely disappear without the onslaught of the odd cyclone.


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