Will this be the season of the super cyclone?

Cyclones have a purpose: they help the Earth's atmosphere do its job of redistributing heat from the equator to the poles. And yet even Australia's Bureau of Meteorology regards them as an enigma. "It has been said that if we had not actually observed tropical cyclones then, despite all we know about the physics of the atmosphere, we would never have guessed at their existence," the bureau says.

In this infrared image, dark areas show the most intense
 energy swirling through Hurricane Sandy over Cuba in 2012.CREDIT:

But just as these incredibly strong tropical storms may be remarkable to scientific experts, they're understandably scary to us.

Known as typhoons in east Asia and hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, tropical cyclones have the potential to wreak havoc on human populations and ecosystems wherever they strike.

In October, Super Typhoon Yutu, the latest in a decade of doozies, slammed into the main Philippines island of Luzon after battering the Northern Mariana Islands with winds of 290km/h. It was this year's most powerful cyclone and among the most violent ever recorded.

Read the story from The Age by Peter Hannam - “Will this be the season of the super cyclone?”