Researchers: Atlanta’s ‘heat-island’ intensified 2008 tornado
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
Vine City's JFK Park after last year's tornado
One year after a tornado tore through Atlanta, researchers at the University of Georgia and Purdue University say the city’s asphalt splendor may have helped create the destructive storm:
Cities like Atlanta are full of concrete asphalt and other man-made materials which make the cities hotter than surrounding areas – the so-called urban heat island effect. That urban environment probably intensified the storm into a damaging tornado, the researchers believe.
The jagged contours of the urban landscape as well as the heat pouring off the city helped intensify the pattern of rising, converging air currents that culminated in the violent tornado, Shepherd said.
“The storm system acted like a hammer, and the urban area like a chisel,” Niyogi said.
(Vine City photo by Thomas Wheatley, homepage photo of tornado damage from Andisheh Nouraee’s Flickr)
