Re: Best season in memory...so far
Posted by Gianmarc on 9/21/2015, 7:25 pm
I think we saw the "beginning" of the present cycle of inactivity years ago, and I think it is a remarkable pattern in the face of the prevailing belief that climate change would increase the number and intensity of storms and strikes on the lower 48. Aside from Dean and Felix in 2007 and Gustav and Ike in 2008, the past ten years in the tropics has been characterized by the dominance of wind shear, ULLs and systems that curve out to sea. Look at tropical activity since around 2010, and it is kind of stunning how little activity of note there has been generally and how fortunate the lower 48 in particular has been. Florida has been the most astonishing illustration of that luck, having been almost entirely unscathed since 2005 and not experiencing a single hurricane strike since then. I can't stress enough how remarkable I think this is; I don't think it has gotten nearly enough attention.

One thing we may be learning here is that the ramifications of climate change may be different than we expected, and that there was more assumption than science behind the idea that it would increase the abundance and severity of tropical activity in the Atlantic basin (the insanely active Pacific over the past few years may be verifying that theory). We may, in fact, have much more to learn from the less active seasons of recent years than from the historic Atlantic seasons of 04 and 05, and I look forward to seeing those scientific studies as they emerge in the years ahead.
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this season sucks - jimw, 9/15/2015, 4:29 pm
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