2021 Accumulated Cyclone Energy

It is such a crude measure of the energy expended by hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons but it is the best we have. I mean ideally we would compute the energy in every invest/tropical disturbance, tropical storm, cyclone on up through the supertyphoons of the Pacific. But we can't.

The numbers are so crazy big that they become almost meaningless. The energy required to get and keep  the big ones spinning is best measured in petaoules of the heat required for that task and the heat required to lift the water that falls as rain.*

So instead we use ACE. 

From Climatlas:

2021 Accumulated Cyclone Energy [ACE]

Basin	Current YTD	Normal YTD	% of Normal YTD	Yearly Climo*	2020**
Northern Hemisphere	63.2600	41	154%	568	436
Western N Pacific	46.0225	30	153%	302	149
Eastern + Cent N Pac	2.2475	3	74%	138	77
North Atlantic	1.13	0	%	104	183
North Indian	13.86	6	231%	18	26
Southern Hemisphere	184.005	N/A	N/A	212	144
Global	207.4920	213	97%	765	584

*Climatology from historical 1981-2010 Tropical cyclone best track datasets
^**Preliminary values from real-time ATCF advisories and will become final when best-tracks are available from JTWC and NHC after post-season analysis Small differences have been found in previous years between real-time and best-track ACE.
Southern Hemisphere Year-To-Date represents October 2020 - May 2021 activity.

....MUCH MORE

*From NOAA:

How Much Energy does a Hurricane Produce?

The energy released from a hurricane can be explained in two ways: the total amount of energy released by the condensation of water droplets (latent heat), or the amount of kinetic energy generated to maintain the strong, swirling winds of a hurricane. The vast majority of the latent heat released is used to drive the convection of a storm, but the total energy released from condensation is 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity, or 6.0 x 1014 watts per day.

If you measure the total kinetic energy instead, it comes out to about 1.5 x 1012 watts per day, or ½ of the world-wide electrical generating capacity. It would seem that although wind energy seems to be the most obvious energetic process, it is actually the latent release of heat that feeds a hurricane’s momentum.

To Calculate:

• Method 1 – Total energy released through cloud/rain formation: An average hurricane produces 1.5 cm/day (0.6 inches/day) of rain inside a circle of radius 665 km (360 n.mi) (Gray 1981). (More rain falls in the inner portion of hurricane around the eyewall, less in the outer rainbands.) Converting this to a volume of rain gives 2.1 x 10¹⁶ cm3/day. A cubic cm of rain weighs 1 gm. Using the latent heat of condensation, this amount of rain produced gives5.2 x 10¹⁹ Joules/day or
  6.0 x 10¹⁴ Watts.
• Method 2 – Total kinetic energy (wind energy) generated: For a mature hurricane, the amount of kinetic energy generated is equal to that being dissipated due to friction. The dissipation rate per unit area is air density times the drag coefficient times the windspeed cubed (See Emanuel 1999 for details). One could either integrate a typical wind profile over a range of radii from the hurricane’s center to the outer radius encompassing the storm, or assume an average windspeed for the inner core of the hurricane. Doing the latter and using 40 m/s (90 mph) winds on a scale of radius 60 km (40 n.mi.), gets a wind dissipation rate (wind generation rate) of1.3 x 10¹⁷ Joules
  1.5 x 10¹²Watts.

Reference: Emanuel, K. A., (1999): “The power of a hurricane: An example of reckless driving on the information superhighway” Weather, 54, 107-108

There are some good energy comparisons on the web. I know Vaclav Smil did some calculations of all the hydrocarbon energy ever used by humans and got to 5.3 yottajoules (YJ — 24 zeros) for coal and 4 YJ for oil. I'll dig it up before the first landfall