World Wide Web Resources on Tropical Cyclones

Where do hurricanes and typhoons come from? Why do they form at all? And why is it that there are years when we see so many of these storms and other years can be so quiet?

Instead of creating a class lesson on Tropical Cyclones, we would like to point out some excellent web references, which make an attempt to answer many of your questions in this area.

Schematic of Hurricane Mitch by NOAA/GFDL. Note: Hurricane height is exaggerated in this picture.

NOAA Satellite Image of Hurricane Mitch (October 1998). Note: For our Southern Hemisphere friends and students, just a reminder that unlike Hurricane Mitch pictured above, tropical cyclones in the SH rotate in an opposite, clockwise circulation.

NOAA's Hurricane Research Division in Miami, Florida, serves a huge amount of hurricane-related information on their Website. The page content is listed alphabetically in an FAQ-like style and is served in three languages: English, Spanish, and French: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/weather_sub/faq.html

The Hurricane Research Division also provides an additional page with links to other interesting Websites, which cover topics related to hurricanes and other tropical cyclones: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/links.html - The page is divided into sites maintained by government agencies, universities, and private hurricane research institutions. Most importantly, there is also a whole list of very interesting "Kid's Weather Links" like UCAR's Hurricane Strike link at http://www.meted.ucar.edu/hurrican/strike/index.htm which teaches what to do when a hurricane is about to strike your area.

The Website can be found at http://www.supertyphoon.com/. Since 1995, SuperTyphoon has been providing a comprehensive collection of information about active tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) in the Atlantic, East-, West-, and South-Pacific, and the North- and South-Indian Ocean. The site provides satellite imagery and related products from numerous government, military, and educational sources on the Internet. You will find the necessary resources to follow the formation and progress of tropical cyclones worldwide, advisories and bulletins, wind analysis imagery, satellite movies, sea surface temperature, and much more.

The Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC) provides a global summary of the most recent natural disasters worldwide, including tropical cyclones. The ADRC member countries also provide individual information on their disaster prevention methods. The ADRC Website can be found at: http://www.adrc.or.jp/top.php

National Geographic's Eye in the Sky series comes with a great introduction, effects, and great scientific background information at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/hurricanes/hurricanes.html as well as with a National Geographic kid's lesson on "Flying into an eye of a Hurricane" http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids/0308/hurricane/

More information on hurricanes have been compiled by the Canadian Hurricane Center (CHC) with specific focus on student questions and can be found at http://www.ns.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/kids.html

A practical guide to "Hurricane tracking and Plotting" including tracking charts for download is provided by the Caribbean Hurricane Network at : http://stormcarib.com/guide.htm

Wunderground.com is another great resource for satellite imagery covering the tropics (Atlantic and Pacific) http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/ This site comes also with maps of sea surface temperature, aircraft reconnaissance reports, tropical weather discussions and outlooks, and much more.

USA Today at http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/hurricane-basics.htm teaches you what hurricanes and tropical cyclones are and when and where they hit. It also includes reports on the latest forecasts, how to stay safe, and how the storms are named.

For further sites in the U.S., you can visit the Digital Laboratory for Earth System Science (DLESE) at http://www.dlese.org, select the Digital Water Education Library (DWEL), and type in "hurricanes". All of these Websites (including those cited above) have been reviewed and selected by K-12 classroom educators.

Clearly the above list is only a small fraction of existing Websites that deal with tropical cyclones. In fact, many of the sites listed above come with additional links to other sites. We hope this initial list will help motivate GLOBE teachers and students to start researching this interesting topic. Once you start searching the World Wide Web, the resources will turn out to be endless. Let us know of other useful sites you find and we'll share it with the rest of the GLOBE community.

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