Earth becoming a windier place: Study

Washington: A new study has revealed that the world is getting breezier.

Although global warming is a suspect, researchers can't say for sure
whether climate change is behind the growing gusts, reports Discovery
News.

The research has found a slow but steady increase in top wind speeds
across the oceans over the last 23 years.

Ian Young, a physical oceanographer at the Australian National
University in Melbourne and colleagues gathered data from seven
satellites taken between 1985 and 2008.

Then, they used five independent statistical techniques to combine,
calibrate and calculate the records. All five produced the same
result.

Despite large seasonal variations, the mean wind speed over the oceans
hasn't changed much in the last two decades, the researchers said.

Speeds of the fastest winds, though, have risen by about half a
percent each year, and heights of the biggest waves have risen by
between a quarter and half a percent each year. Those trends have been
strongest in the southern hemisphere.

Over time, these kinds of small and incremental rises add up. Off the
coast of Southern Australia, for example, the tallest 1 percent of
waves have risen from five to six meters. The most extreme winds are
now blowing 10 percent faster than they used to.

Mark Donelan, an oceanographer at the University of Miami in Florida,
said the ongoing changes in the most extreme conditions could have
major consequences.

If winds continue to get gustier at the same rate over the next 50
years, for example, the destructive forces of Category 5 hurricanes
would multiply.

"They'd go from knocking over 90 percent of the buildings to knocking
over all the buildings," Donelan said.

The findings were published in the journal Science.