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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They both hit me in St. Lucie . =/
Is this high ever going to move, except for like 3 days or so...?
Yea, they both launched from KSC atop a Delta II in 2003, the closest approach mars did to earth in many thousands of years.
REMINDER: Space Shuttle Endeavour set to launch Saturday @ 7:39 PM.
I remember that week from up here in Ohio from a different low near Cleveland... It snowed here. I doubt Wilma had anything major to do with it but it was still odd because they were talking about them at the same time on TV so often.
Wilma + Florida = 2005
I hope no TD,TS or higher will be in the vicinity.
It is etched in my brain. Going to check out the office after finally being able to get out to a main street, the street signs were folded in half.
They say, on post season analysis only a cat2 coming through here, but if you look at the loops, a nasty, dirty band came barreling through here at the end.
Powerful... beyond imagination... until you experience it.
Thanks for that.
I may actually take a ride down to Merritt Island Wildlife Preserve in Titusville Saturday to watch the launch, although I can see it from the beach here, about 30 miles north of there, and about 50 miles north of launch site. It's amazing to watch every time. I was teaching middle school the day of the Challenger disaster, and we saw it break up overhead...knew it was wrong by the uncharacteristic cloud pattern.
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Something's going to spin up one of these days... Goodnight!
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From 8 PM NHC Discussion:
TROPICAL WAVES...
A TROPICAL WAVE IS ALONG 47W/48W S OF 17N MOVING W 15-20 KT. THIS WAVE IS JUST W OF A DEEP LAYER MOISTURE MAXIMUM OBSERVED ON TOTAL PRECIPITABLE WATER IMAGERY. A LARGE AREA OF SAHARAN DUST SURROUNDS THE WAVE THAT COVERS THE TROPICAL ATLC E OF 55W TO W AFRICA. WITH THE DRY SAHARAN AIR LAYER SURROUNDING THE WAVE...NO DEEP CONVECTION IS IN THE VICINITY OF THE WAVE.
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Shear Map
Because a woman wanted it round....LOL
OK, I will bite, but I smell a trick question,,,,,. LOL
You are absolutely correct, we just have to be patient.
It's so they won't fall in...
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After it, though, I got lucky. Jog to the S and I may have been in deep.
The regret is not setting up video up there! It would have been nice, first-hand, at home video.
I watched screens being blown away through those windows.
Needless to say, that was the only opportunity for video from this house. ;)
It will be interesting to see how that wave evolves as it gets into the carib.
Unlike earlier in the season, not a lot of complex patterns to watch.
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Areas of the state deemed to be in an extreme and exceptional drought have grown since the beginning of the year. The circled values point out that percentage increase.
A heat wave has begun in Texas and will continue at least through the weekend with temperatures soaring well above the 100 degree mark.
No more stories.
Can anyone tell that the MIL is here?
Important stuff to do on the 'puter. ;)
That's exactly right. Ha ,,,, Very good press, my learnin is done for the day .....LoL
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Because women felt it was the easiest shape to use to have men fall through it lol
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
May we finally get Ana???
Everything manmade in this world is as such because women behind the men made them do it their way lol
oh um except the Washington Monument LOL
According to urban legend, a manhole cover was accidentally launched from its shaft during an underground nuclear test in the 1950s, at great enough speed to achieve escape velocity. The myth is based on a real incident during the Operation Plumbbob nuclear tests, where a heavy (900 kg) steel plate cap was blasted off the test shaft at an unknown velocity, and appears as a blur on a single frame of film of the test; it was never recovered. A calculation before the event gave a predicted speed of six times Earth escape velocity, but the calculation is unlikely to have been accurate and they did not believe that it would leave the Earth in reality. After the event, Dr. Robert R. Brownlee described the best estimate of the cover's speed from the photographic evidence as "going like a bat
Wow thats so wrong lol
Is Plumbbob related to Spongebob? lol
Something that happens a lot in Washington lol
Don't feel bad mine was June 14th LOL.
yea but stayed tuned after the season, I think we will have a classified unnamed storm or two
if 90L is upgraded in post-season then I think the date would be May 23rd
If 92L is the first to be upgraded in post-season then it would be June 3rd.
Ohhhhhh, myyyyyy...
Um, no one can really answer this.
BAH! I set an alarm on my cell phone... then promptly forgot to take my phone off silent. booo
Kind of early to determine this.
That might require interesting weather.
I think GFS can answer this
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