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| Hurricanes Irma and Jose in the Atlantic Ocean in 2017. Less pollution due to the Clean Air Act seems to be one reason hurricanes are increasing in the Atlantic Ocean |
It was enacted in 1963 and amended numerous times since. It has made the air in and near the United States a lot easier to breathe over the past several decades. I don't know how many lives the Act saved due to the fact that it created much safer air. I bet it's a lot of people, though.
Just as every cloud has a silver lining, almost every good thing has a dark side. One consequence of the Clean Air Act is it might be encouraging extra hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.
As AccuWeather reports, the key here is particulates, also known as aerosols, which is a mix of fine dust and tiny liquid droplets.
Some of this gunk in the air is natural stuff, made up of sand blowing from deserts, smoke from distance wildfires or volcanoes, or maybe sea salt.
A lot of other particulates come from us as we blast down the highway in our SUVs, or we allow stuff to belch from factories, houses and buildings. Things like catalytic converters in vehicles, scrubbers on smokestacks and other devices the Clean Air Act demands have gotten rid of much of those aerosols.
Which of course air blowing over the Atlantic from the United States has a lot less particulates than it did decades ago.
The cleaner air is teaming up with climate change to make oceans warmer. When there was more pollution in the air, it blocked some sunlight from reaching all the way down to the Earth's surface. Now, with less crap in the air, the sun shines brighter and hotter on the oceans, making them heat up more efficiently.
Hotter oceans mean more potential fuel for tropical storms and hurricanes. A storm that might not have been able to get its act together decades ago because of cool ocean water can now gain strength from that hotter H20.
The lead author of the study, released in May is Hiro Murakami, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory. He described to CNN the Clean Air Act and its effects on hurricanes this way:
Decreased aerosol pollution is akin to quitting smoking. If you quit smoking, you're much healthier. Less pollution increases the health of the general population. However, there are side effects to quitting smoking, such as weight gain and stress. Those problems aren't as bad as smoking, overall. The increased hurricane activity is sort of like the comparatively small side effects of quitting smoking.
Hurricanes are deadly. Pollution is deadlier.
Meanwhile, tropical cyclones in the western Pacific are decreasing in number. In that part of the world, hurricanes are known as typhoons. They remain frequent and fierce there, more so than in the Atlantic. But we have seen a decreasing trend in the annual number of typhoons and tropical storms along and off the Asian coast.
Industrialization in China and India has boomed tremendously over the last half century. That means more particulates, which are shading the western Pacific a bit. The particulate pollution has caused many deaths and often leads to economic disruptions in India, China and other Asian nations. That has led the nations to begin enforcing some serious anti-pollution regulations.
Researchers caution that decreased particular pollution is only one factor that seems to be increasing hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic.
"Murakami predicts in the next decade, increased greenhouse gases will significantly influence tropical cyclones compared to human-caused particulate air pollution."
The good scientist elaborated further for CNN: "Climate science is very complex and it's a work on progress, especially for hurricane activity....What we saw in the past 40 years may not be applied to the future, so we may see something much different."
Great. More climate surprises loom.
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