Abstract
The recent 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season was the most active, with 31 storms. September was the most active month of the season, with a simultaneous occurrence of five storms. This study probed into the meteorological and oceanographic conditions prevailing in the Atlantic Main Development Region (MDR) during the high activity months of August, September, and October of 2020. The mean sea surface temperature (SST) for the month of September 2020 was around 0.2 °C higher than the 30 years climatological average. Vertical wind shear (WSH) was well below the threshold for cyclogenesis, with a mean of ~ 5 m/s. Such conditions favoured the consecutive storm formations in the basin. Statistical sensitivity analysis was extended for the above three months of 1991–2020, using SST, WSH, and low-level relative vorticity (VOR) as predictors. The analysis showed mean difference between MDR and tropical region SST (SSTDIFF) to be a better influencer of hurricane count (HC) variability, with r2 values of 0.43 and 0.35 for the months of August and October of 1991–2020 period, respectively. VOR was found to be the dominant influencer of hurricane activity in the month of September, with r2 value of 0.47. Wavelet local multiple correlation technique showed correlation values to be higher (~ 0.75) for a SSTDIFF–HC pair for the months of August and October. However, VOR–HC pair had the highest correlation (~ 0.8) for the month of September. The WSH condition of the region, although favourable, was not found to be influencing hurricane activity significantly for this period.
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Data availability
The ERA5 reanalysis data sets are available from ERA5 Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home. The IBTrACS hurricane data are available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/international-best-track-archive?name=ib-v4-access. The R codes for wavelet local multiple correlation technique can be obtained at https://github.com/jomopo/WLMC_climate_time_series. All codes and output datasets from this study could be made available through the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
All authors acknowledge Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar for providing necessary support for carrying out the present work. SSM acknowledges the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India, for the Junior Research Fellowship (09/1059(0042)/2021-EMR-I).
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SSM and DS have conceptualized the work. SSM has carried out the analysis. SSM and DS have written the original and revised manuscript.
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Moharana, S.S., Swain, D. On the recent increase in Atlantic Ocean hurricane activity and influencing factors. Nat Hazards 118, 1387–1399 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-06061-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-06061-3