Bjorn Samios 12/16/18

Bio Current Event 11

Gramling, Carolyn. “New Research May Upend What We Know about How Tornadoes Form.” Science News, 14 Dec. 2018, www.sciencenews.org/article/new-research-may-upend-what-we-know-about-how-tornadoes-form?tgt=nr.

For my review, I read the article “New Research May Upend What We Know about How Tornadoes Form,” by Carolyn Gramling. The classic idea of a tornado formation in most people’s minds, but new research could disprove this. The formation of tornadoes has been mostly scientifically unclear because they are formed so fast, usually in under a minute which makes it very difficult to study. Also, it is very difficult to pin down where a tornado is forming in time to study it accurately. But utilizing a “Doppler radar mounted at the back of a truck,” (Gramling, 2018), a team of scientists were finally able to collect data on the formation of four tornadoes. They found that the wind rotation actually began first at lower altitudes, 20 meters above the ground. 60 seconds later the radar recorded rotation at about 3.5 kilometers, proving that tornadoes actually form from the bottom up.

Understanding the formation of dangerous tornadoes is very important for science, as Americas tornadoes are progressively worsening. Twisters today stay on the ground for longer than those of a few decades ago did. If scientists can learn how they are formed, there will be great advances in tornado detection, and save more lives. A study proved that the total gigawatt output of tornadoes in the USA is increasing every year by 5.5%, meaning that these storms are only going to get worse. More moisture in the air is created by global warming, allowing tornadoes to gain more power and create more destruction.

This article was extremely well written, keeping the reader hooked on the subject matter of the article. It had great strengths as well as its weaknesses, and pointing out weaknesses of anyone’s work is more effective to their writing than complements. Gramling did a great job explaining how this will affect us and why we should care. She also was good at explaining why tornadoes are getting worse and how they actually form. The first noticeable flaw was the lack of defined terms. She used terms such as “supercell,” and “tornadogenesis,” without explaining to the reader what they meant. It would have been much easier to understand if she had simply added a sentence or two to explain to the average reader what certain scientific words mean.