The Ocean is Heating Up for Hurricane Season

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-ocean-is-heating-up-for-hurricane-season-17514

The Ocean is Heating Up for Hurricane Season
By Brian Kahn
Published: June 4th, 2014

If you live on the Gulf Coast or Eastern Seaboard, hopefully you’re ready for Atlantic hurricane season, which started on Sunday, June 1. As the season gets underway, hurricane-friendly ocean temperatures in the Atlantic are ramping up, though they’re not quite there in all places just yet.



A map showing global sea surface temperatures for the end of May. Areas in red indicate temperatures above the threshold hurricanes generally need to develop.

A new graphic from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows ocean temperatures at the end of May for the entire globe. For tropical cyclones, the broader label for hurricanes and tropical storms, to form, surface ocean waters generally need to be above 82°F, which is colored in red on the map. That helps fuel the evaporation that drives a hurricane’s convection engine and give storms a boost from a regular ol’ rainstorm into a full-fledged tropical cyclone. Temperatures below that threshold are shown in blue.

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However, the Atlantic is a different story. Hurricane-ready waters spread across the Caribbean to areas to the west of Africa. There’s still a fairly large area of cooler water stretching from the northwest coast of Africa across the Atlantic.

That’s notable because that region is one of the main places where Atlantic hurricanes form. Heck, it's called the main development region. All told, 60 percent of tropical storms and 85 percent of major hurricanes that form in the Atlantic basin are birthed here.