Some of you will know that I am an avid believer in natural climate variability and reoccurring weather patterns, be it decadal or on centuries basis.
Earth's climate is chaotic, always moving and changing, many internal feedbacks such as teleconnections often recur decadally. Examples would be NAO- North Atlantic Oscillation, AMO- Atlantic Multidecadal oscillation, just to mention a few.
It is a scientific fact that certain aspects of internal variables affect the formation of Hurricanes, ENSO state is just one of those aspects.
Historically El Niño conditions created conditions that impeded storm development in the Atlantic, however, this is not “fixed in stone." SSTs -(Sea surface temperature) can influence storm formation in the MDR- (main development region),
One must remember that El Niño is not the only influence to hurricane development, the AMV-(Atlantic Multidecadal variability) or AMO as above. Warm AMV is characterized by warm Atlantic SSTs and increased thunderstorm activity. Additionally, warm SSTs provide the fuel for hurricane development.
The AMV is currently in a warm phase and has been since 1995. As of July 2023, SSTs off the coast of Africa, where North Atlantic hurricanes can begin their life cycle, are nearly 3°C higher than the historical average. SSTs are also lifted across the Atlantic MDR where a large percentage of major hurricanes are known to get their strength. This year I feel the Historically warm Atlantic SSTs and the warm phase of the AMO has offset the atmospheric stability and vertical wind shear, although El Niño is yet at full strength and development seems a little slow, again all in favour of development, there is no reason as of September 8th to suggest this season will be any different to the past few centuries.
You can see for yourselves the graph below shows no upward trend in size or frequency of landfall hurricanes. Please don't underestimate nature, as we all know, know matter the science it will and does, make science look rather silly, expect and plan for the unexpected.
Thanks for dropping in 🙏
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