Assessing the Atlantic Hurricane Season Climate Factors

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Historical Conditions

Historical conditions are available for comparison to the current situation. Time series are useful for comparing trends over time. The individual maps are useful as a snapshot of the conditions for a given time period.

Hurricane Related Time Series

The time series below compare the number of hurricanes per year with the corresponding sea surface temperature (SST) and wind shear conditions over the Main Development Region (MDR). Click on an image to see a larger view.

Hurricane/SSTHurricane/Wind Shear
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SST and Wind Shear Maps

You can obtain historic maps from 2005. The SST maps are based on the monthly NOAA OI SST. The climatology used is 1971-2000. The wind shear plots are based on the NCEP/NAR Reanaysis

Variable Month Year

Standardized SST Time Series

The time series plots below are based on the Hadley SST dataset from 1871-1981, and the NOAA OI V2 after that. Data has been standardized by the monthly climatology (1971-2000) and is area averaged.

Standardized Anomalies Mean Temperatures
Region* Jul Aug Sep
Western Gulf of Mexico X X X
Eastern Gulf of Mexico X X X
Eastern Florida Coast X X X
Western Caribbean X X X
Eastern Caribbean X X X
Region* Jul Aug Sep
Western Gulf of Mexico X X X
Eastern Gulf of Mexico X X X
Eastern Florida Coast X X X
Western Caribbean X X X
Eastern Caribbean X X X

* Region Definitions:
  1. Western Gulf of Mexico: 18-30N, 88W-98W
  2. Eastern Gulf of Mexico: 20-30N, 81W-88W
  3. Florida Shelf/Bahamas: 20-30N, 70W-81W
  4. Western Caribbean: 10-20N, 71W-88W
  5. Eastern Caribbean: 10-20N, 60W-71W

Generate Other Timeseries

The links below allow you to generate your own custom time series data.

This is a Research and Development Application