Cyclone Remal

28.05.2024

Cyclone Remal

Why in the news?

            Recently, As per the prediction of The India Meteorological Department (IMD),  Cyclone Remal hit the coasts of Bangladesh and West Bengal. 

About Cyclone Remal

• Cyclone Remal is a tropical cyclone in the Northern Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal).
• Remal means “sand” in Arabic.
• It was named by Oman.
• This naming follows a standard protocol for cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea.
• The cyclone is likely to impact the Sundarbans mangrove forest, one of the largest in the world, renowned for its diverse fauna.

What is a cyclone?

• A cyclone is a large-scale system of air that rotates around the center of a low-pressure area. It is usually accompanied by violent storms and bad weather.
• A cyclone is characterized by inward spiralling winds that rotate anticlockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

What are tropical cyclones?

• Tropical cyclones are those which develop in the regions between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer.
• They are the most devastating storms on Earth.
• Such cyclones develop when “thunderstorm activity starts building close to the center of circulation, and the strongest winds and rain are no longer in a band far from the center,”.
•  The core of the storm turns warm, and the cyclone gets most of its energy from the “latent heat” released when water vapour that has evaporated from warm ocean waters condenses into liquid water.
• Moreover, warm fronts or cold fronts aren’t associated with tropical cyclones.
• Tropical cyclones have different names depending on their location and strength.
• For instance, they are known as hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Atlantic Ocean and the eastern and central North Pacific Ocean. In the western North Pacific, they are called typhoons.

How are the cyclones named?

• The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is a 185-member United Nations agency.
• Realizing the importance of an effective cyclone warning and disaster mitigation in the North Indian Ocean region (comprising both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal), WMO came together in 1972 to establish the Panel on Tropical Cyclones (PTC).
• The PTC originally comprised eight member countries Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sultanate of Oman and Thailand.
• The PTC then began naming tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea in 2004, after receiving recommendations from panel countries.
• In 2018, the PTC expanded to include Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen.
• In April 2020, a list of 169 cyclone names was released, 13 suggestions each from the 13 countries. It is this list that is currently being used to name cyclones.

How the naming convention works:

There are some basic guidelines that countries need to follow while sending in their proposals. These include ensuring that the proposed name is neutral to

(a) Politics and political figures

(b) Religious beliefs,

(c) Cultures and

(d) Gender;

○does not hurt the sentiments of any group of population over the globe;

○is not very rude and cruel in nature;

○is short, easy to pronounce, and not offensive to any PTC member;

○is at most eight letters long;

○is not repeated (not before, not after).

○The list of proposed names arranges the countries in alphabetical order and lists all the names suggested by them.

○Then these names are allotted to any cyclone, which takes place in the region, on a rotational basis regardless of which country proposed it.

●For instance, the first cyclone on the list was named Nisarga (Bangladesh’s name choice), which hit Maharashtra, followed by Gati (India’s choice, hit Somalia), Nivar (Iran’s choice, hit Tamil Nadu), and so on.

Why name cyclones at all?

• Adopting names for cyclones makes it easier for people to remember, as opposed to numbers and technical terms.
• Apart from the general public, it also helps the scientific community, the media, disaster managers etc.
• With a name, it is easy to identify individual cyclones, create awareness of its development, rapidly disseminate warnings to increase community preparedness and remove confusion where there are multiple cyclonic systems over a region.

                                                                      Source: Indian Express

Question :- Consider the following statements:

1. Cyclone Remal is a tropical cyclone in the Northern Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal).

2. The name 'Remal' in the list of tropical cyclones is given by Oman.

3. The cyclone is likely to impact the Sundarbans mangrove forest.

How many of the above statements are correct?

A. Only one

B. Only two

C. All three

D. None

Answer C