Final answer:
There are around 80-100 tropical storms and about 45-50 hurricanes globally each year, with these numbers varying annually. The 2020 season was record-breaking with 30 named storms. Hurricanes are becoming more frequent and intense, largely due to warmer ocean temperatures.
Step-by-step explanation:
The number of hurricanes globally each year can be quite variable. During the 2020 hurricane season, a record-breaking year, there were 30 named storms. Historically, there's been an increase in hurricane frequency, with the average in recent decades generally suggesting somewhere around 80-100 tropical storms and about 45-50 of those reaching hurricane status globally each year. However, scientists have observed that factors like warmer ocean temperatures are contributing to more intense and more frequent storms.
Hurricanes typically develop in the tropics where the water is warmer, leading to more powerful and destructive storms due to the rapid rise of heated air which creates strong wind currents and heavy rains. Furthermore, hurricanes can be extremely dangerous because of their potential for catastrophic winds, tremendous rainfall leading to flooding, and the fact that their power scales with the cube of wind velocity - simply put, as the hurricane's wind speeds increase, its potential for destruction increases exponentially.