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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Where is STORMTOP? I look forward to his highly intellectual forecasts.
I just snorted Dr. Pepper out of my nose...thanks...
;)
jeff, you're alright......or are you leery of that compliment...LOL. Some of us "storm" folks are alright.....or at least tolerable.
I agree. All of us, even the professional mets, learn something from here now and then. Not one person here knows everything, and everyone is here to learn. Anyone talking down to the blog as a whole like you are "all that and a bag of chips" completely defeats the purpose of the blog, and will get you ignored faster than just about anything else. Some of us will have our differences, and have a few small disagreements, but we will smooth it over after relaxing a bit, and move on with learning.
I am not trying to direct this at anyone who has been active recently, except those who are already on the special list.
sad thing is I think he is being serious lol
You're good StormSurgeon, no worries. I tried not to cast my generalization too widely, yet I see that I did. (d'oh!)
No worries, we all know who you were referring to.
Back out for now.
ol, now I need a new Dr. Pepper...
July 8, 2005 Category 4 Hurricane Dennis Slams Cuba...
Good afternoon everyone. Could somebody help me out with a couple questions? What is AAM? And TanomMDR-TanomNINO3+Nino(1+2)/TanomNINO4? Just trying to learn. Thanks. :)
Reflector site for those at work, which now also includes Weather456, daily updates
AOI
AOI
Not true. G8 agrees to a global temperature rise goal of 3.6F. A goal is a floating point in space, able to be manipulated any way a politician sees fit.
Restrictions imply a serious plan and then consequences if the restriction is exceeded.
I personally believe life on earth would never be so precarious as if the United Nations or G8 could actually control the weather. In the attempt at regulating weather fairness and equality, earth's climate would be thrown into chaos.
True goals should only be set when you have the means to achieve them. The actual causes of the recent warming trend may be completely out of our control. How do you set a goal for something that may be an uncontrolled variable?
http://www.wftv.com/news/19994399/detail.html
I don't know about AAM, but Tanom--- is an abbreviation for Temperature ANOMalies.
(the bold/italics was because the html tags weren't closed. I added a /strong and /em onto my post to close them. )
Thank you very much. That was a new one to me. :)
Just because something doesn't form doesn't mean it can't significantly impact someone.
Thanks again Jeff. Hope i get it right this time. :)
YAY for mind-reading! ;)
I noticed yesterday that the shear is forecasted to be exceptionally high in Aug/Sept for GOM.
Is this constant or is it an indication of averages? If its constant I am assuming the chance of any significant development would be extremely low. I think I read 50k+.
That being said, keep in mind I am not a Met so the bashing priviliges are automatically reduced.
This particular blog is troubling in that it is both for and against El Nino's and the small boy's propensity to cause hurricanes trouble. I'm confused. Can't we just get him a little La Nina to play with and then we don't have to worry about it? Or should we hang a giant pinata over central South America and let them go for it; totally ignoring their duty to reek havoc on us unsuspecting humans.
When the weather geckos at the rambling wreck of Georgia Tech got to speculating on their theory I started to hear that voice of the school teacher on Charlie Brown and realized I wasn't up for figuring out what 'n' was in the equation of storm formations. I suppose I could throw an X in with the 'n' but why? Just child's play. Pity, the child is me. :P
How funny....I pretty much don't know what they are talking about either. It is more like, are we going to get a storm or not? But, as we know it is not a simple yes or no question. :)
Global analysis of ocean latent heat flux, sensible heat flux, evaporation, and flux related surface meteorological variables from 1958 to 2006 are available
The project of the Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) is to develop enhanced air-sea heat flux analysis products for the global oceans. The product integrates satellite observations with surface moorings, ship reports, and atmospheric model reanalyzed surface meteorology. The current on-going 50-year global heat flux analysis is sponsored by the NOAA Office of Climate Observations (OCO) through the WHOI Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research (CICOR). The project principal investigators are Dr. Lisan Yu and Dr. Robert A. Weller.
This is not an experiment. This is an exercise in waste reduction. Sure, there may be variables outside of humanity in what is causing the current warming of the globe. However, we ARE a variable. It is silly to pretend we are not with islands of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean. We can't control the world. God teaches us to control ourselves, however.
I believe that humanity is the prime mover behind the recent episode of warming, but whether this is true or not, learning to clean up after ourselves and setting goals and schedules to do it can only be a good thing. (I do it with my kids!)
Not like a big old hurricane that comes along with a garbage pile ahead of it acting like a bulldozer pushing down everything in sight. "THAT" makes sense. :)
I'm looking forward to the Discovery Channels Storm Chasers this year. I hear they got some good footage. http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/storm-chasers.html
NOAA Office of Climate Observation (OCO)
ARGO floats improve seasonal forecast skill
First-of-kind Buoy to Monitor North Pacific Acidification
Research in Pacific shows ocean trouble
Deployment of Global Drifter 1250
Article on GEOSS appeared in the Nature
NOAA successfully deployed 3 ATLAS moorings and 1 ADCP mooring in the Indian Ocean
That's very true rainmound, that or you go blind. :D
Way to hit below the belt, lol
She had just shaved that morning too lol
Its only an average. A few days with extreme shear can overwhelm a week's work of average or below average shear.
Oh come on I just ate lol
* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...
northeastern Jefferson County in southeast Texas...
central Orange County in southeast Texas...
this includes the cities of... Mauriceville... Bridge City...
Can't we just get regular rain??
Apparently that man died on the beach in Melbourne instantly by lightning. It was not even a severe storm. I always tell newbies to Florida if there any indication of a t-storm nearby get inside no matter what, sad to hear this story and two men men in Clermont were hit after the storm passed. Just amazing 3 people hit in one day.
Txalways, we were supposed to have broken our drought here outside of Houston but our rain gauge didn't get spit. Of course, if it rains at Intercontinental, the Houston says "everyone got a good soak." liars, liars, pants on fires
And today is abysmal. I have to wrap myself in an asbestos sunsuit to go outside and not catch fire. darned thing itches too. :)
ETA - correction - since the end of May my town has received .22 of rain. SUCKS
HAHA! large hail too... I may get some of the rain
He actually got a pic of my mother in law.
None for me... again.. surprise surprise
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