The report describes another very active hurricane season – which runs from June 1st to November 30th – and includes an above-average forecast for all storm categories. This year’s forecast is terribly similar to the forecasts of the last two years. Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science and lead author of the report, compared the 2022 forecast with those of 2021 and 2020. “For example, in both April 2020 and April 2021, we forecast eight hurricanes and four major hurricanes. This year, we forecast nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes,” Klotzbach told CNN. The new hurricane season is set to be just as, if not a little more active than last year, which was the third most active season ever recorded. “The team predicts that hurricane activity in 2022 will be about 130 percent of the average period 1991-2020. By comparison, hurricane activity in 2021 was about 120 percent of the average period,” the report said. A forecast of 19 named storms for this coming season exceeds the last two years, as CSU has predicted the most eponymous storms in a prospect of April. “One of the reasons we anticipate more brand storms than we had in previous years is that we call more storms now than we used to because of technological improvements,” Klotzbach explained. Because of improvements to satellites, they are now able to detect weak storms that may have been lost even 20-30 years ago, Klotzbach added. With the previous two years running out of name lists, 2022 could add a third consecutive year to the record. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has an additional list of names of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic just in case.
The reason behind the active Atlantic season
The primary contributing factor to a hyperactive Atlantic is “the possible absence of El Niιοo,” according to hurricane researchers at the CSU. The tropical Pacific is currently under weak La Niña, a pattern known for the colder-than-average ocean temperatures around the equator. The phenomenon is affecting the weather around the world. La Niña has favorable conditions for hurricanes as opposed to El Niño. El Niιοo hurricane seasons are known for high-level wind patterns throughout the Caribbean that dissolve hurricanes as they attempt to form, making the seasons less active. “While La Niιαa may weaken and move into neutral conditions by this summer, CSU is not currently waiting for El Niιοo to culminate in the Atlantic hurricane season,” the report said. The report added that “the warmer Caribbean and the eastern part of the subtropical Atlantic also favor an active Atlantic hurricane season in 2022.” Tropical storms crave the warm water of the oceans, which helps them to grow and develop. It is one of the main reasons that scientists say that the climate crisis is changing hurricanes in the Atlantic. Warmer waters and winds can increase rainfall rates, making a hurricane coming ashore more likely to lead to catastrophic floods. “We know that hurricanes are generally accelerating faster,” Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University, told CNN. “They are bigger and louder than they would be otherwise; they have a lot more rainfall associated with them and rising sea levels are exacerbating the storm surge.” Although there has been an increase in hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin in recent times, research has shown an overall downward trend in hurricanes worldwide since 1990. “We attributed the reason behind this to a trend toward more frequent La Niña and fewer El Niños over the last 30 years,” Klotzbach told CNN, citing a recent study. La Niña conditions tend to increase hurricane activity in the Atlantic, but reduce hurricane / hurricane activity in the Pacific, according to Klotzbach. “As the Pacific is a much larger basin and generally generates many more storms than the Atlantic, we have seen an overall trend toward fewer global tropical cyclones with hurricane force despite the increased activity we have observed in the Atlantic,” Klotzbach said. he said.
Stay ahead of the hurricane season
“It only takes a storm near you to make this an active season,” said Michael Bell, a professor at CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science. Coastal communities are being warned to start taking appropriate precautions for an active hurricane season now. The chance of a major hurricane reaching land along the U.S. coastline is 71%, well above the 52% average of the last century, according to the report. Sign up for weekly weather alerts A greater than two-thirds chance of a major hurricane reaching land should inspire those in hurricane-prone areas to take action now. The damage from Hurricane Ida Category 4, which hit the Gulf Coast in 2021, serves as a strong reminder of the strength of large tropical cyclones. Hurricane Preparedness Week is May 1-7, during which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) encourages people to identify their hurricane risk, make an evacuation plan, and collect emergency supplies in the event of a hurricane. their area. The National Hurricane Center (NHC), a subsidiary of NOAA, is expected to publish its first five-day tropical outlook for the 2022 hurricane season on May 15. The NOAA Climate Prediction Center plans to issue its seasonal outlook on May 24th. CSU will also update its forecast on June 2, July 7 and August 4 to keep the public as informed as possible.
