Deadly late-season Atlantic hurricanes growing more frequent
What may be the final tropical disturbance in the Atlantic (94L) has fizzled, due to dry air and increasing wind shear, and there's an excellent chance that this will be final "Invest" of 2010 in the Caribbean. The 2-week wind shear forecast from the GFS model is showing a dramatic increase in wind shear over the Caribbean in the coming weeks, which should put an end to the Caribbean hurricane season. However, it's been another remarkably active November in the tropics this year. The formation of Hurricane Tomas this month marks the fourth consecutive year in the Atlantic with a hurricane occurring November 1 or later. We had Category 1 Hurricane Noel in 2007, Category 4 Hurricane Paloma in 2008, Category 2 Hurricane Ida in 2009, and now Category 2 Tomas in 2010. This is the first time since beginning of reliable hurricane records in 1851 that there have been four consecutive years with a late-season November or December hurricane in the Atlantic. The previous record was three straight years, set in 1984 - 1986. It used to be that late-season hurricanes were a relative rarity--in the 140-year period from 1851 - 1990, only 30 hurricanes existed in the Atlantic on or after November 1, an average of one late-season hurricane every five years. Only four major Category 3 or stronger late-season hurricanes occurred in those 140 years, and only three Caribbean hurricanes. But in the past twenty years, late-season hurricanes have become 3.5 times more frequent--there have been fifteen late-season hurricanes, and five of those occurred in the Caribbean. Three of these were major hurricanes, and were the three strongest late-season hurricanes on record--Lenny of 1999 (155 mph winds), Paloma of 2008 (145 mph winds), and Michelle of 2001 (140 mph winds). Of course, the number of storms we are talking about is small, and one cannot say anything scientifically significant about late-season Atlantic tropical cyclone numbers, unless we include storms from late October as well. This was done, though, by Dr. Jim Kossin of the University of Wisconsin, who published a 2008 paper in Geophysical Research Letters titled, "Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?" He concluded that yes, there is an "apparent tendency toward more common early- and late-season storms that correlates with warming Sea Surface Temperature but the uncertainty in these relationships is high". The recent increase in powerful and deadly November hurricanes would seem to support this conclusion.
Figure 1. Damage on St. Lucia from Hurricane Tomas. Image credit: St. Lucia Star.
Deadly late-season Atlantic tropical cyclones are growing more frequent
In the 500+ years people have been encountering hurricanes in the Atlantic and recording these encounters, we are sure of only twenty November and December storms that have caused loss of life. If we restrict our time window to the past 70 years, when we have a fairly reliable data base of hurricane mortality thanks to the yearly storm summaries published in Monthly Weather Review, we find only ten late-season storms that killed people. Of those ten, seven occurred in the past twenty years, including the second deadliest late-season tropical cyclone on record, Hurricane Gordon of 1994, which killed 1145 people on Haiti. Only the Great Cuba Hurricane of 1932, which killed 3107 people in Cuba, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas, was a deadlier late-season tropical cyclone. Hurricane Tomas ranks as the 6th deadliest late-season hurricane since 1851 in the Atlantic. The storm left 30 dead or missing on Haiti, at least nine dead on St.Lucia, two on Curacao, and one in the Virgin Islands. The storm has caused hundreds more indirect cholera deaths in Haiti, by spreading contaminated water.
Figure 2. Number of days a named storm existed in the Atlantic during November and December between 1950 and 2010. Years when an El Niño event occurred are not included, in order to make the plot smoother (El Niño events tend to dampen Atlantic hurricane activity during all portions of the season.) There has been a general increase in late-season tropical cyclone activity over the Atlantic in recent decades.
The increase in deadly late-season storms in the past twenty years is primarily a Caribbean phenomena. Only two deadly late season hurricanes have affected the U.S. in the past century: Hurricane Kate of 1985, which killed five in Florida, and the 1925 Florida Hurricane, which hit southwest Florida as a Category 1 hurricane on December 1. This remarkable storm was the latest landfalling hurricane in U.S. history, and killed 60 people.
Resources
Kossin, J., 2008, "Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?", Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 35, L23705, doi:10.1029/2008GL036012, 2008.
A list of the 20 deadly late-season tropical cyclones: http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/deadly_nove mber.asp
My blog post, Is the Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?
Next post
I'll have a new post on Friday.
Help support Portlight.org's efforts to bring some Christmas cheer to the kids of Haiti, by donating to their Christmas in Haiti campaign.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 — Blog Index
Amen to that! +100
You are joking, aren't you? Some sort of sarcastic satire, or demonstrating absurdity by being absurd, right?
SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS HAVE REDEVELOPED IN THE NORTHWESTERN
CARIBBEAN SEA IN ASSOCIATION WITH A WEAK AREA OF LOW PRESSURE
CENTERED NORTH OF HONDURAS. SURFACE PRESSURES ARE RELATIVELY
HIGH...AND UPPER-LEVEL CONDITIONS ARE ONLY MARGINALLY FAVORABLE FOR
DEVELOPMENT. IN ADDITION...THE LOW CENTER IS EXPECTED TO MOVE
INLAND OVER BELIZE AND GUATEMALA BY LATE TOMORROW...LIMITING THE
OPPORTUNITY FOR SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT. THERE IS A LOW CHANCE...
20 PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE
NEXT 48 HOURS. NEVERTHELESS...THE SYSTEM WILL LIKELY BRING LOCALLY
HEAVY RAINFALL TO PORTIONS OF BELIZE...GUATEMALA...AND THE YUCATAN
PENINSULA OF MEXICO OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.
And the Ignore button is a blessing as well
And scientists have been doing everything within their power to prevent denialists from seeing their data.
Why should they.
Their absolute power over the data allows them to prove the case.
as the blog turns... ha
From both sides.
By someone using the ignore button, they give up the right to use the "!" and "-" keys. Thanks.
By using the ignore button, you're basically saying "I don't care what's posted, as long as I don't have to read it". Fine by me.
The ignore button doesn't prevent others from quoting me. And the quote feature says "This is important enough for everyone to read, whether the person is ignored or not". Thanks for passing on the word.
The ignore feature doesn't prevent the new users and casual viewers from seeing the posts. It does say, though, that there are some questions that people don't, won't, or can't answer.
So as long as AGW is freely discussed, I've got a home.
Indeed...
Considering I'm underneath it, it's raining. A lot. Hope it clears by tomorrow :(
Hi TampaSpin
I like the way you do not take everything at face value and that you ask questions. Any reasoning person would do the same thing.
When you ask about temperatures being taken at the same location for a period of years and the surroundings of the area, in this case a city, change over time I have thoughts of my own.
1. Wouldn't the readings reflect on the activities of man in that environment? Certainly not on a global scale, but on a local scale. Since man is effecting the local environments globally, then would this not have some impact globally as well?
2. Should scientist take temperature readings that are suppose to reflect readings of one area and do so from another area would that not be reason for all to say that this is not really representative data?
Can you monitor temperature in Boston when you take your readings 30 miles outside of Boston? True, when the environment changes due to man's activities in the area then we could relocate our measuring devices to a nearby area where man made changes are less prominent. Should we do this then we would have to start the information gathering process all over again. This could be a perpetual process and we would never have a long term historical database to work with. I believe that it is for this reason that the monitoring stations need to be in the same historical location. Otherwise the data becomes skewed because of the relocation of the monitoring station. Think about it for a moment. The monitoring station could have been located in a normally shaded area and then later moved 15' to normally sunny area. Would this move of only 15' have a direct impact on the readings over the norm? I would be more willing to question the science, if this is what was taking place.
Just my thoughts.
All you wanted was one?
Lonnie Thompson, Bona-Churchill ice core (drilled in 2002).
To date, there has been no journal publication whatever of these results (funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs grant OPP-0099311).
If it contained GOOD news, it would have added to the list. Hiding it advances the AGW cause.
are you therefore saying that those that do not believe in Global warming, those that are conservitive and attend church, and those who think that states rights trump federal rights should be arrested for assult just because of that ... this is called profiling and this is what has caused us so many problems
One might be able to guess your profile as well...
That goes both ways, does it not?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Actually, I've been thinking myself AGW denial should be criminalized. It's like stopping people from yelling "tsunami" while the wave approaches. A wave big enough to kill billions.
We need a more fair and balanced prison population!
The disturbance in the se caribbean is in close dialogue with south america and there is some very dry air to it's north.
So you consider a Doctoral Thesis presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy to be from an "established scientist" and published in a "peer-reviewed journal"?
Cool. Whatever it takes to advance the agenda, I'm for it.
Polar bears are enroute to South Florida....
tastes like chicken!
Is there a Doctor in the House.....i'm getting a serious Headache!
Sounds like a good ad for Chick-fila......EAT MORE POLAR BEAR...........ROFLMAO
Very dangerous way of thinking you have... check your history...
Viewing: 401 - 451
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 — Blog Index