Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was a cold-core extratropical cyclone, a storm type known to derive energy over land from the clashes between different air masses. (Credit: NASA‘s Earth Observatory)

In the summer of 2007, Tropical Storm Erin stumped meteorologists. Most tropical cyclones dissipate after making landfall, weakened by everything from friction and wind shear to loss of the ocean as a source of heat energy. Not Erin. The storm intensified as it tracked through Texas. It formed an eye over Oklahoma. As it spun over the southern plains, Erin grew stronger than it ever had been over the ocean.The study was published March 2013 in the International Journal of Climatology.

Erin is an example of a newly defined type of inland tropical cyclone that maintains or increases strength after landfall, according to NASA-funded research by Theresa Andersen and J. Marshall Shepherd of the University of Georgia in Athens.

Before making landfall, tropical storms gather power from the warm waters of the ocean. Storms in the newly defined category derive their energy instead from the evaporation of abundant soil moisture — a phenomenon that Andersen and Shepherd call the “brown ocean.”

The research also points to possible implications for storms’ response to climate change.

Sources:    Sciencedaily  Read more here

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