Modiki El Niños and Atlantic hurricane activity
It's an El Niño year, which typically means that Atlantic hurricane activity will be reduced. But not all El Niño events are created equal when it comes to their impact on Atlantic hurricane activity. Over the past 150 years, hurricane damage has averaged $800 million/year in El Niño years and double that during La Niña years. The abnormal warming of the equatorial Eastern Pacific ocean waters in most El Niño events creates an atmospheric circulation pattern that brings strong upper-level winds over the Atlantic, creating high wind shear conditions unfavorable for hurricanes. Yet some El Niño years, like 2004, don't fit this pattern. Residents of Florida and the Gulf Coast will not soon forget the four major hurricanes that pounded them in 2004--Ivan, Frances, Jeanne, and Charley. Overall, the 15 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 6 intense hurricanes of the hyperactive hurricane season of 2004 killed over 3000 people--mostly in Haiti, thanks to Hurricane Jeanne--and did $40 billion in damage.
A new paper published in Science last Friday attempts to explain why some El Niño years see high Atlantic hurricane activity. "Impact of Shifting Patterns of Pacific Ocean Warming on North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones", by Georgia Tech researchers Hye-Mi Kim, Peter Webster, and Judith Curry, theorizes that Atlantic hurricane activity is sensitive to exactly where in the Pacific Ocean El Niño warming occurs. If the warming occurs primarily in the Eastern Pacific, near the coast of South America, the resulting atmospheric circulation pattern creates very high wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, resulting in fewer hurricanes. This pattern, called the Eastern Pacific Warming (EPW) pattern, occurred most recently during the El Niño years of 1997, 1987, and 1982 (Figure 1). In contrast, more warming occurred in the Central Pacific during the El Niño years of 2004, 2002, 1994, and 1991. The scientists showed that these Central Pacific Warming (CPW) years had lower wind shear over the Atlantic, and thus featured higher hurricane activity than is typical for an El Niño year. One of the paper's authors, Professor Peter J. Webster, said the variant Central Pacific Warming (CPW) El Niño pattern was discovered in the 1980s by Japanese and Korean researchers, who dubbed it modiki El Niño. Modiki is the Japanese word for "similar, but different".
Figure 1. Difference of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from average during the peak of hurricane season, August-September-October, for seven years that had El Niño events (except for 2009, when the SST anomaly for July 1 - 3 is plotted). On the left side are years when the El Niño warming primarily occurred in the Eastern Pacific (EPW years). On the right are years when the warming primarily occurred in the Central Pacific (CPW years). Shown on the top of each plot is the number of named storms (NS), hurricanes (H), and intense hurricanes (IH) that occurred in the Atlantic each year. Atlantic hurricane activity tends to be more prevalent in CPW years than EPW years. An average hurricane season has 10 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 intense hurricanes. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL.
What, then, can we expect the current developing El Niño event to do to 2009 hurricane activity? Kim et al. note that in recent decades, the incidence of modiki CPW El Niño years has been increasing, relative to EPW years. However, the preliminary pattern of SST anomalies in the Pacific observed so far in July (lower left image in Figure 1) shows an EPW pattern--more warming in the Eastern Pacific than the Central Pacific. If Kim et al.'s theory holds true, this EPW pattern should lead to an Atlantic hurricane season with activity lower than the average 10 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 intense hurricanes. There is still a possibility that the observed warming pattern could shift to the Central Pacific during the peak portion of hurricane season, however. We are still in the early stages of this El Niño, and it is unclear how it will evolve.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Take care.....nice seeing you around.
Yeah, I saw it. Will check in the morning on the 00Z July 10th run.
This is the one I know: http://www.meteo.fr/temps/domtom/antilles/pack-public/animation/animMOSAIC2.html
Recurving Vs Landfalling Cape Verde Hurricanes
That is the hurricane that messed up Mobile Bay?
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Quick, who said it?
Were a community,not a Gulag.
Thank you kindly. That's what I like to hear.
someone on a boat LoL -- "Bull" Halsey ?
Of course before we had satellites so there could of been more then just 1.
David Farragut during the civil war aboard...
95E looking pretty good right now
true, further research found 2 other possible systems, both after the 1st one
A boat, I win :)
All I can find is he was 12 when given the helm of a prize ship :(
Thanks Always.......Good Stuff there Bro. Now combine that with the stats below from a 2003 Article from the Journal of Climate (FSU Grad Students)and you start to get the picture that "whenever" the season starts, and whether only one or two intense storms, someone in the Caribbean, or East Coast of US, may be impacted this upcoming season if you put these two general notions together:
The East Caribbean has not seen more than two landfalling hurricanes in any warm or neutral phase year from 1900 to 1998. In contrast to the North Caribbean (Fig. 5a), the East Caribbean has no significant (95% level) decrease in hurricane landfalls during the warm phase relative to neutral years (Fig. 5b); however, a significant (95% level) increase in hurricane landfalls during cold years relative to neutral years is observed. The probability of one or more landfalling hurricanes is 56% in the East Caribbean during cold years, which is nearly double that noted during neutral years (30%). Probabilities of landfall during warm years (23% for one or more hurricanes) are only slightly less than the landfall probabilities for neutral years.
The West Caribbean exhibits results very similar to the East Caribbean. The probability of one or more hurricanes making landfall is 61% during a cold phase, which is double that observed during neutral years (30%; Fig. 5c). The probability of one or more landfalling hurricanes during warm years, only 23%, is very close to the probability during neutral conditions. Statistical analysis reveals a significant (99% level) increase in hurricane landfall probabilities during cold phase years compared to neutral years; however, using both 99% and 95% confidence limits, there is no significant difference in warm phase and neutral phase hurricane landfalls.
However, at the end of the day, there are just too many variables, many of which we are still trying to understand fully, at play for anyone to make a "concrete" prediction of how any season may end up.
Credit: Chris Landsea
On August 5, 1864, Farragut won a great victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay. Mobile was then the Confederacy's last major port open on the Gulf of Mexico. The bay was heavily mined (tethered naval mines were known as torpedoes at the time) [1]. Farragut ordered his fleet to charge the bay. When the monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank, the others began to pull back.
Farragut could see the ships pulling back from his high perch, lashed to the rigging of his flagship the USS Hartford. "What's the trouble?" was shouted through a trumpet from the flagship to the USS Brooklyn. "Torpedoes!" was shouted back in reply. "Damn the torpedoes!" said Farragut, "Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!"
That was after he participated in battles at Vicksburg, Port Allen, Fort Jackson, Chalmette, Port of NOLA. Some good results, some bad.
In addition, most experts have already stated over and over that there is no correlation between early seasonal activity and the peak of the hurricane season.
Sea surface temperatures continue to significantly warm across the ATL.
EL Nino should moderate the season from being above average but its atmospheric effects are not as pronounce to produce 1992 and 1997 figures.
Based on this, there remains no reason to lower my seasonal forecasts of 12 named storms.
It's coming down hard in Tobago, since 4:30 pm.
No rainfall in Trinidad so far today, but it sure looks like sooner rather than later.
This follows my post earlier today, that said that there was no rain to be seen....
I stopped "counting" a few Blog seasons ago and simply try to see if it will be an average/below average/above average season...So your prediction is basically slighly above average?
Average, ACE standards.
I hear you,had a brief shower earlier,looks like the heavy stuff is just offshore.That was the calm before the storm.
Thanks........We will see what Mother Nature throws our way this year; your reasoning seems sound.
1933 was likely way more active than 2005, but because of lack of satellite activity we don't really have a clue. 2005 was one of those rare and random active seasons like 1969 and 1950 but added to that was the hyperactive period we're in now.
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Many bad storms can have low ACEs' if they form close to home
Charley only had an ACE of 10.6
Hang on, it's comin'. Ready or not.
Although, with the ITCZ still so far south, look for a week of sun when this passes over. Again.
Good to meet you viman.
Good call to stick with what you think and not swayed by others.
NOAA normally states 1995 in their seasonal outlooks.
From their 2009 Outlook
Atlantic hurricane seasons exhibit prolonged periods lasting decades of generally above-normal or below-normal activity.
The current high-activity era began in 1995.
The season by 31 December this year should fall between their forecast of 9-14 named storms.
It normally last 20-30 years so we have atleast another decade (probably atleast 2015)
Using ACE plots, some could say that we may have entered a lull phase should the type of season we had in 06 and 07 happen for a few more years. Remains to be seen, of course.
Credit: Ryan Maue
Don't want to open the door to a GW debate (sorry but a pet peave of Dr. M) but I wonder, assuming that temps are slowling rising due to increased carbon emissions (think China and India), whether this will effect the current cycle in any was as opposed to the historical "switch" prior to this current era........Lol....I will leave that question to my children I suppose. :)
Nuttin' but hot weather up here.
Basseterre, SK
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