Ajit Karn
Paris: Meteorologists believe that Cyclone Freddy, which has twice slammed into the African coast after traversing the Indian Ocean, may go down in history as the longest storm ever recorded.
Lethal tune
Beginning in early February in the southeastern Indian Ocean off northern Australia, the cyclone was designated Freddy by Australia’s meteorological service on February 6.
Freddy then traversed the entire ocean, passing Mauritius and the French island of La Réunion, before making landfall in Madagascar on February 21 and sailing over the island en route to Mozambique on February 24.
In both countries, it claimed nearly a dozen deaths and affected nearly 400,000 people.
The cyclone then returned to sea, refuelling in the balmy waters of the southwest Indian Ocean, before executing a rare reversal of direction and returning to Africa.
Last weekend, it struck Mozambique with winds of up to 200 kilometres per hour (125 miles per hour) before wreaking havoc in the landlocked nation of Malawi, causing floods and mudslides that have killed more than 200 people.
Meteo-France characterises Freddy as a “particularly potent and compact tropical system that generates extreme winds near its centre.”
In a bulletin issued at 0600 GMT on Wednesday, Malawi’s ministry of natural resources and climate change reported that Freddy had “diffused” and that the storm’s extreme rainfall would recede.
It has travelled in excess of 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles). Leon-Eline and Hudah were the last cyclones to traverse the entire southern Indian Ocean in 2000.
Record holder
“Tropical Cyclone Freddy is exceptional because it persisted longer than any other in recorded history,” says Melissa Lazenby, a climate change lecturer at the University of Sussex in southern England.
The World Meteorological Organization’s record for the longest-lasting tropical cyclone was established in 1994 by a storm named John, which lasted 31 days.
A commission of WMO experts in extreme weather events will now investigate whether Freddy is the new titleholder, a procedure that is expected to take several months.
On March 3, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that Freddy had the highest accumulated cyclone energy of any southern hemisphere storm in history. Accumulated cyclone energy is the entire quantity of energy associated with a tropical cyclone over its lifetime.
Major storms in the Indian Ocean are known as cyclones, while in the Pacific and Atlantic they are known as typhoons and hurricanes.
Climate link?
Experts are unsure whether Freddy can be definitively linked to climate change, a phenomenon that is measured on a long-term basis as opposed to a singular event, but state that it is consistent with predictions.
Ms. Lazenby, referring to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stated, “Based on the IPCC report, this type of extreme tropical cyclone event is not remarkable given previous predictions that cyclones will intensify.”
“More analysis is required to deduce the rationale behind its… durability,” she said.
Allison Wing, associate professor at Florida State University, stated, “In general, climate change is making tropical cyclones stronger and drier and increasing the risk of coastal inundation from storm surge due to sea-level rise.”
Also read: Mozambique gets hit by Cyclone Freddy for the second time: 5 Points
She stated that scientists have detected no long-term trend in the number of tropical cyclones.
Ms. Wing stated, “There is evidence that tropical cyclones are becoming more intense and that the deadliest hurricanes are becoming stronger.”
She added that in recent years it has been observed that large cyclones tend to rapidly intensify by at least 35 miles per hour (56 kilometres per hour) in just 24 hours.
