Hurricane Sandy

• Question: Did Global Warming cause Hurricane Sandy?
• First: Warm water is a major source of fuel for hurricanes; this is the direct cause of the power of the storm. As the Sandy continued to move north instead of weakening it became stronger, due to rise in temperature in the ocean (due to global warming) making the waters in the north hotter then usual, by 5 degrees. Giving Sandy all the energy it needs to power up.
• Second: Sandy took a dramatic left turn when it came to the north, which swept into the whole east coast of the United States. This was very unusual weather patterns for the North Atlantic, it was due to (-NAO) negative North Atlantic oscillation: Models suggest that it resulted from the ice melting from Greenland. This is still less then certain factor but it still can be a confident data collected to determine so. Due to the melting ice, it is slowly starting to change the flow of the ocean; which is not a good thing because once the flow of the ocean is disturbed everything that is stable in nature will go out the window. Giving the ability for the Sandy to make a left turn and fuse with the snowstorm.
• Third: The unusual form of the Hybrid Storm. A winter type storm crossed the Pacific and started heading eastwards across the United States, while Sandy was forming just off the coast of Jamaica in October. Jamaica’s area is typical breading ground for Hurricanes, because in this area the water is particularly warm giving the energy for a hurricane to build up. As the hurricane headed north past Jamaica, the hurricane should’ve shifted northeast out into the ocean but did not.  The block in the Atlantic Ocean was preventing weather from moving generally east to west across the ocean, as it would usually do. Thus preventing Sandy to move east and keeping it stalled, giving the storm the opportunity to move towards the west and mix with the winter storm. This created a storm that had never been seen before, and would it be something that we would be seeing in the near future; to then raise the question: (Did Climate change/Global Warming to be completely blamed for Hurricane Sandy?)
• Personal Opinion : I believe after researching, that Global Warming/ Climate Change had been a big player in causing the hybrid storm sandy to surge to the northeast and create the damage it caused in the United States. But I also believe that, Climate Change/ Global Warming is not to be %100 blamed for the cause of Sandy. It also can be do to the fact that nature is slowly changing and it just part of the process that nature goes throw. It also can be a combination of the both. The combination of Global Warming/Climate Change and the natural course the earth takes can highlight the unusual rise of water and warming up and Hybrid Storm. Overall, we cannot point fingers to what fully caused the storm to create itself but only analyze the factors that caused the storm. There is not enough data to tell whether it was complete caused by Global warming/ Climate change. But it does rise the question: (How frequent will these types of “Hybrid Storms” will be in the future?) The only way is to analyze the storm and what were it’s causing factors and obtain as much data as possible on the ongoing changes of the weather.