RAS question
Cyclones are called 'Hurricanes' in the:
Correct answer: (B) Atlantic Ocean and Eastern Pacific.
Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern Pacific.
Explanation
A hurricane is not a different kind of storm from a cyclone in the basic geography sense; it is the regional name used for a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. NOAA explains that meteorologists use the umbrella term tropical cyclone for these intense rotating storms, but local names change with the ocean basin in which they form. The same storm type is called a typhoon in the western Pacific and a cyclone in the Indian Ocean. Since the question asks where cyclones are called hurricanes, the matching basin pair is the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern Pacific, not the Indian Ocean or the western Pacific.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) The Western Pacific is associated with the term typhoon in the standard regional naming pattern, not hurricane.
- (C) In the Indian Ocean, the same class of tropical storm is referred to as a cyclone rather than a hurricane.
- (D) The Southern Indian Ocean falls within the Indian Ocean naming context, where the term cyclone is used instead of hurricane.
Concept
This tests the world geography convention for naming tropical cyclones by ocean basin. It recurs in RAS because disaster management and climatology questions often require matching the same weather phenomenon to its regional terminology.