by Daniel Brouse
How Is Climate Change Hitting You?
Climate Energy Is Being Redistributed
Q: What’s your take on not having a single hurricane this season?
Great question! I’ve written several papers on this topic, and I think what we’re seeing is particularly interesting.
As of September 23, the Atlantic has produced six named storms but still has produced zero hurricanes—an exceptionally delayed first hurricane. NOAA’s current summary shows Atlantic ACE about 92% below the 1991–2020 average at this point in the season.
What alarms me isn’t simply the lack of hurricanes. It’s the apparent coupling of climate patterns that historically operated more independently. I first warned about this Pacific El Niño–Atlantic Niña coupling back in May. Now, as we progress this far into the season, the observations are providing an unusually clear real-world example of how teleconnections can link distant parts of the climate system.
The simultaneous occurrence of an extreme Pacific El Niño and an anomalous Atlantic Niña represents a significant disruption of the historical baseline. NOAA reports that the El Niño is strengthening, with eastern equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperatures already more than 3°C above average.
An Atlantic Niña can suppress Atlantic hurricane development through increased atmospheric stability and wind shear. So there is a relatively straightforward physical explanation for the quiet Atlantic. But I think the deeper question is why these large-scale ocean–atmosphere patterns are coupling so strongly in the first place.
That’s where my climate-acceleration research comes in. I see this as evidence worth watching for increasingly interconnected feedbacks and teleconnections—changes in ocean circulation, atmospheric circulation, energy redistribution, and the hydrologic and carbon cycles that can influence one another across ocean basins.
In other words, the absence of hurricanes isn’t evidence that the climate system is becoming less energetic. It is the opposite: climate energy is being redistributed in ways that produce very different outcomes in different parts of the planet.
The hurricane season is therefore only one piece of a much larger climate-system puzzle.
Read more on the Pacific–Atlantic energy redistribution connection here:
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? — Planetary Teleconnections