Why do hurricanes need names?
Andrew, Katrina, Sandy and now Matthew: we have been naming hurricanes for more than 100 years. But why do major tropical storms need names? We asked PhD student Kenny Meesters, who specializes in disaster response.
After raging through Haiti, hurricane Matthew has now hit the coast of Florida. With wind speeds of up to 140 miles per hour, Matthew is believed to be the strongest Atlantic storm in a decade. While Florida braces for Matthew, Kenny Meesters explains why we give names to hurricanes.
Common language
Meesters worked as a PhD candidate at Tilburg University for three years, and is currently finishing his dissertation on information management after disasters at the Technical University of Delft. According to Meesters, naming storms can be useful. “Names like Matthew are easy and relatable. Because hurricanes affect a lot of people, it’s not convenient to use technical, meteorological terms to refer to them”, he explains. “When a disaster occurs, it’s important that everybody speaks a common language.”
Awareness
Naming hurricanes can also help raise awareness, Meesters says. “By giving hurricanes names that people can relate to, like Matthew, they become part of public awareness more easily”, he explains. It seems that a hurricane with a name is no longer an abstract meteorological phenomenon to us. When we name a storm ‘Matthew’, it instantly becomes something very real and concrete: “We can almost put a face to it.”
Communication problems
By naming hurricanes, major storms become part of a common language and awareness more quickly. But there are also disadvantages to giving storms human names, Meesters says. “Sometimes names are spelled in different ways, which doesn’t facilitate communication. On social media, for example, ‘Matthew’ is sometimes spelled with a single ‘t’. And hurricane Yolanda, which hit the Philippines in 2013, was referred to with an entirely different name in Asian countries.”
How are names chosen?
Hurricane names are not chosen arbitrarily. Meteorologists of the World Meteorological Organization have an organized name-giving system, deciding on names for tropical storms years in advance: after Matthew, hurricanes will be named Nicole, Otto, Paula, Richard, Shary and Tobias.
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