Atlantic’s hurricane alley is ‘so hot from El Niño’ – but not a guarantee for an active season, says UK expert

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Adjectives from the alarmist climate manual are well to the fore here, but so is uncertainty.
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The Atlantic’s “hurricane alley” is already experiencing summer temperatures, despite it only being February says Live Science.

And the unprecedented temperatures could be bad news for the upcoming storm season, researchers say.

Since March 2023, average sea surface temperatures around the world have hit record-shattering highs and are still climbing. This ominous ocean heating is being driven by accelerating global warming and the El Niño climate pattern.

“Since the 1980s the world has been experiencing an increased rate of warming. The warming rate is not just simply increasing from year to year though: What we see are phases of faster warming alternating with periods when warming is slower,” Joel Hirschi, the associate head of marine systems modeling at the U.K. National Oceanography Centre, told Live Science. “The level of warming we saw in 2023 and now in 2024 is remarkable.”

Average sea surface temperatures are now roughly 68.5 degrees Fahrenheit (20.3 degrees Celsius) across the North Atlantic, a full degree higher than the 1981-2011 average. This includes the Atlantic’s hurricane alley, a hurricane-forming belt of water that stretches from the west coast of Africa to Central America.

“Unbelievable: the North Atlantic sea surface temperature is now 4.5 standard deviations above the recent 1991-2020 climatological mean,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate in marine, atmospheric and earth sciences at the University of Miami, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “That translates to a 1-in-284,000-year event. Yet here we are watching it unfold, one day at a time. This is deeply troubling.”

And this increase in sea temperatures could lead to more intense Atlantic hurricanes later in the year, when hurricane season is expected to start on June 1 and end on Nov. 30.
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However “warm ocean temperatures on their own are not a guarantee for an active season,” Hirschi said. “In addition, the vertical wind shear in the subtropics needs to be weak.” If the vertical wind shear — the change in wind speed with height — is too intense, the stormy clouds are blown apart and no hurricanes will form.
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During El Niño, winds in the Atlantic are typically stronger and more stable than usual, acting as a brake on hurricane formation. But if the climate cycle follows predictions and dies down or is replaced by La Niña (its cooler counterpart), it could make for an unusually stormy summer.

Full article here.

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