(just kidding about the SAL, it doesn't really come into play until those long-haul Cape Verde storms start running later in the season)
As noted a couple weeks ago in "Hurricane Watch: Australia's Bureau of Meteorology Lowers Odds of Full-Blown El Niño":
Long time readers know the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, through a couple teleconnections influences the North Atlantic hurricane season. Stronger/longer El Niño tends to correlate with fewer hurricanes, La Niña tends toward more 'canes....And it's not just a less powerful El Niño that raises the chances for a more active hurricane season.
***...Look for later hurricane season forecasts to add one or two more hurricnes than the earlier guesses.
The BOM is one of our big three public sources on ENSO conditions, along with Columbia Uni/IRI and the US. NOAA.
For El Niño Modoki situations Japan's Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) is the go-to.
Finally, the comment thread on this NOAA page seems to be leaning toward a Modoki:...
Should the above mentioned Modoki variation be the summer-of-2019 story we hark back to this 2009 post:
New Type Of El Nino Could Mean More Hurricanes Make Landfall
... "Normally, El Niño results in diminished hurricanes in the Atlantic, but this new type is resulting in a greater number of hurricanes with greater frequency and more potential to make landfall," said Peter Webster, professor at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
That's because this new type of El Niño, known as El Niño Modoki (from the Japanese meaning "similar, but different"), forms in the Central Pacific, rather than the Eastern Pacific as the typical El Niño event does. Warming in the Central Pacific is associated with a higher storm frequency and a greater potential for making landfall along the Gulf coast and the coast of Central America....And today we see the cat bond mavens at Artemis relay:
TSR raises Atlantic hurricane forecast to 6, UK Met goes higher at 7
The final updates to forecasts for the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season are coming in thick and fast now, with updates from Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) and the UK Met Office now raising the average forecast for the season slightly.
The official start-date for the Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season is June 1st, so forecast teams tend to update either just before or after this date.
While indicative only of the potential for hurricane activity, these forecasts are closely watched by insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market interests.
With little having changed in the way of broader climatic inputs to the forecast, as ENSO and El Nino remains an uncertain shadow on the season, in terms of how long the current weak El Nino conditions will persist, there has been little change in terms of forecast numbers, although enough to raise the averages somewhat.
Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) had previously opted for a 2019 Atlantic hurricane season forecast of 12 tropical storms, 5 hurricanes and 2 major hurricanes, which was slightly below the long-term average.
In its new hurricane forecast update published late yesterday, TSR has increased its forecast very slightly, option for still 12 named tropical storms, but now 6 hurricanes, 2 of which would become major hurricanes, for the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season.The Artemis Hurricane webpage:
That’s still roughly aligned with the long-term averages, but below the average hurricane activity seen in the last decade.
TSR still expects that trade winds from July to September will be slightly stronger than normal in 2019, which it says is “due mainly to a continuance of weak-to-moderate El Niño conditions” adding that “this will have a suppressing effect on North Atlantic hurricane activity in 2019.”
However TSR stresses the uncertainty in the ENSO forecast for this period and it should also be noted that should El Nino fade away the Atlantic hurricane season can still throw severe storms towards the United States and Caribbean in October anyway, by which time later this year many forecasters expect the ENSO effect to be reduced.
TSR’s forecast also calls for 1 hurricane landfall on the United States and 2 tropical storm landfalls during the 2019 season, while just 2 tropical storms are forecast as having a chance of making landfall in the Caribbean and Lesser Antilles.
Another 2019 hurricane season forecast to have been released very recently is the one from the UK Met Office.
The Met Office calls for 13 named tropical storms to form during the 2019 season, 7 of which it forecasts could become hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher intensity.
The Met Office forecast is even slightly below another recently published one from IBM’s The Weather Company, which opts for a forecast of 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes and 3 hurricanes during the coming Atlantic hurricane season.
Together with all of the other hurricane forecasts we track over on our dedicated web page, this gives us an Artemis average forecast for the 2019 hurricane season from June 1st of 13 named tropical storms, 6 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes....MORE
2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season
Track the forecast for the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, with maps and data on every tropical depression, tropical storm and Atlantic hurricane that forms during the year. Find 2019 hurricane forecasts and a tropical storm tracking map below which will show live named storm information through the 2019 season. There are also links to recaps of storms so far this year, forecasts of seasonal tropical storm and hurricane activity for 2019, satellite images of the Atlantic, information from the U.S. National Hurricane Center about the current tropical conditions and links to other useful hurricane season data sources. If you find this page useful please bookmark it so you can return easily and also share it with your contacts....MUCH MOREMore tomorrow.
