A sudden marine heat wave off the coast of Florida has surprised scientists and sent water temperatures soaring to unprecedented highs, threatening one of the most severe coral bleaching events the state has ever seen.
Sea surface temperatures are linked to more intense storms. But there’s a ton of factors that affect hurricane strength. Wind shear is probably one of the biggest.
That said, given the right conditions and all things else being conducive to intensification, I would think higher SSTs would strongly encourage more rapid and higher intensification.
You’re right about this. There’s also been studies done recently that suggest that hurricanes have been intensifying generally in recent years and there will most likely be a continued trend so total frequency will go down but more intense hurricanes will become more common.
The thing is there are cycles for this stuff. That will continue too. In Florida the years from 2004-2006 had large numbers of storm with high landfall counts. Followed by years of relative inactivity. So these cycles will also continue. Granted the storms that do but may be more intense, we are also a LOT better at prediction and modeling. The accuracy we had at 2 days in the early 2000s is closer to the accuracy we have at 5 days now.
Of course there’s cycles but even removing decadal trends, it seems like there’s there’s still an increasing trend in terms of intensity. And slower years of extreme events in there could be somewhat related to the climate hiatus period but I’m not 100% on that. And you’re absolutely right that prediction and modeling has gotten substantially better but that doesn’t mean these storms won’t still be costly. It’s an interesting issue for sure
Sea surface temperatures are linked to more intense storms. But there’s a ton of factors that affect hurricane strength. Wind shear is probably one of the biggest.
That said, given the right conditions and all things else being conducive to intensification, I would think higher SSTs would strongly encourage more rapid and higher intensification.
You’re right about this. There’s also been studies done recently that suggest that hurricanes have been intensifying generally in recent years and there will most likely be a continued trend so total frequency will go down but more intense hurricanes will become more common.
The thing is there are cycles for this stuff. That will continue too. In Florida the years from 2004-2006 had large numbers of storm with high landfall counts. Followed by years of relative inactivity. So these cycles will also continue. Granted the storms that do but may be more intense, we are also a LOT better at prediction and modeling. The accuracy we had at 2 days in the early 2000s is closer to the accuracy we have at 5 days now.
Of course there’s cycles but even removing decadal trends, it seems like there’s there’s still an increasing trend in terms of intensity. And slower years of extreme events in there could be somewhat related to the climate hiatus period but I’m not 100% on that. And you’re absolutely right that prediction and modeling has gotten substantially better but that doesn’t mean these storms won’t still be costly. It’s an interesting issue for sure