okay 23:33 21 coming straight for us
oh my gosh as a longtime storm research
and storm chaser I'm very interested in
the dynamics of the formation of some of
the strongest storms on earth
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my name is Anton Simon I'm an
atmospheric and environmental scientists
and National Geographic Explorer
something about the age of AIDS I've go
to the library by myself and take out
all books on things that fascinated me
and reading everything I could what
fascinated me back then things like
mountaineering great big storms
volcanoes guess what all these years
later look at what I'm doing it's not a
surprise I've had to confront things
that used to be childhood fears I've
always been terrified of heights even to
the present day but I can climb
mountains because I've learnt to deal
with it
similarly I used to be quite terrified
of storms and perhaps what that fear
comes a fascination and that fascination
that compels you to want to understand
you know what it is and why they are so
scary
a tornado is a rapidly rotating column
of air that is spawned by a much larger
system a very intense rotating
thunderstorm we call a supercell thanks
to great scientific advances we have a
very good understanding of how supercell
thunderstorm forms but we don't yet have
a good understanding of how tornadoes
form from supercell storms the better we
can understand storm formation the
better we can predict tornadoes now
we're trying to understand how a tornado
forms and number one a layer of warm
moist air near the Earth's surface
flowing beneath a layer of much drier
air further up and number two wind shear
which is the change of wind with
increasing height a buildup of heat
creates atmospheric instability which
drives the updraft as the air rises
rapidly it also changes direction
introducing a twisting motion and
eventually the rotation can later allow
tornado to form so your typical tornado
is not large it's typically on the order
of maybe 100 meters at the surface
however on occasion conditions will
allow much much larger circulations to
form the largest tornado on record which
we've studied was the el reno storm of
2013 el reno Lahoma
the tornado grew to the largest I
mentioned ever seen anywhere in the
world more than four kilometers was just
two and a half miles wide
working with tornadic storms took a very
tragic turn in 2013 when the arena storm
occurred and I lost my former research
teammates and unfortunately was his car
was overtaken by the tornado and three
people were killed so we went through a
personal tragedy the loss of great
friends and colleagues but we've taken
that very very sad episode recognising
an opportunity in that to actually
advance tornado science by better
understanding the storm that caused
there the disaster
so we reached out on social media we did
what we call crowdsourcing which is
going on social media and requesting hey
were you there did you see something
interesting would you be willing to
share it with us then from that this
huge discovery comes forth we were able
to answer this long-held question to
tornadoes developed from the cloud
downward or from the ground outward they
answer at least in the case of the
world's largest tornado unquestionably
it formed from the ground and grow
upward into the parent thundercloud that
was a really big discovery that we never
expected better understanding of storms
ultimately benefits the public if we can
improve warnings and that type of thing
the other reason that I'm doing it is
because I simply loved it and this
enormous personal reward for doing it
and I'll never pretend that I need
another reason other than that to do
this
congratulations team long time coming I
hope it didn't hurt anyone that was so
beautiful
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