DEEP OCEAN EXCAVATION REVEALS COMING DANGER

There is a zone around the Earth's equator where the sun's rays strike most directly, drawing in trade winds from both hemispheres, and fueling violent, tropical storms.

It's called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ. It shifts a bit seasonally, drifting north or south of the equator as the Earth's tilt to the sun changes. Might seem a bit disturbing to think the Earth's tilt moves at all. But these orbital cycles are slow and predictable - they take tens of thousands of years. You won't feel a thing.

But a new force is energizing the ITCZ, intensifying violent storms to unprecedented levels.

Researchers noticed it on a June 2022 expedition to one of the most famous natural landmarks on the planet: The Great Blue Hole. 

This massive marine sinkhole in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Belize, is more than a thousand feet wide and over 400 feet deep. The upper reaches are a haven for marine life, very popular with scuba divers. But at its deepest, the water is oxygen free and the layers of sediment are largely undisturbed by weather, making it a virtual Time Machine for researchers.

Each layer of sediment represents a period of time, the lower you go the older the sediment. And this expedition was equipped to dig deep. Using specialized gravity and percussion piston corers over 6 days, researchers excavated a 98 foot long sediment core. The layers covered over 7,000 years of geological history.

Turns out the quality of the sediment layer can actually tell you about the weather. Fine, orderly layers indicate calm weather. But coarse, chaotic "event layers" mark the arrival of powerful tropical cyclones. There's no mistaking it.

In the oldest layers, Geologists found evidence of four tropical cyclones every passing century. These are expected numbers as the Earth moved from the last ice age into the current warmer period. And Geologists expected the number would rise a bit more as time passed. The sediment core reflected exactly that. In the layers settled between 4,000 and 1,000 years ago, there were fourteen tropical storms each century. More than 3X the earlier era.

But the most recent layers were not expected at all. In fact, they were a bit shocking. There were nine major storm events in just 120 years - the equivalent of 45 per century. Numbers of tropical cyclones that used to take a thousand years to hit are now reached in decades.

The results of the Great Blue Hole expedition were published in March of this year and concluded normal orbital shifts can't explain this surge in storm activity.

So what else could be driving it? The location and intensity of the ITCZ is largely driven by the heat of the ocean and land below. Normally, the sun is the source of heat. For the past 12,000 years, global average temperatures were pretty stable, fluctuating up or down a degree in Fahrenheit. But since the 1800's, temperatures have risen over 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit -- not over a thousand years, but just in a century. 

The new variable that has arrived on the planet in the last century? Mankind and the Industrial Revolution. Scientists point to human activity as the dominant force driving the increase, blaming what they call "anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions". 

Whatever the reason, the sediment stands as a warning we are in for an onslaught of tropical storms. That means a steady diet of 70 mile an hour winds, floods, and a deadly amount of rainfall that brings flash floods, landslides, and mud flow. Not to mention the tornadoes that spawn on the outer bands of the storms.

We know these storms are dangerous. In 2024, Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida's northern Gulf coast and left 230 dead in its wake. That was one of 18 named storms in that single year.

Climate change is hotly debated, especially how much of it is man-made. But while we're debating, it might be a good idea to move our homes into the Great Blue Hole, where it's safe.