Sentences with phrase «warm sea surface»

(Extremely warm sea surface temperatures both in the Gulf of Mexico and off the U.S. East Coast are helping to fuel the present storm's record intensity.

For a hurricane to form, DeMaria said, there has to be a big enough difference in temperature between a cool atmosphere and a warm sea surface.

It also creates warm sea surface temperature anomalies along the equator from the international dateline in the Pacific to the coast of South America.

These records have been driven by the strong El Niño and record - warm sea surface temperatures across large parts of the Pacific and Indian oceans.

General: El Niño episodes (left hand column) reflect periods of exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures across the eastern tropical Pacific.

Such oscillations might also alter hurricane patterns, but the main driver of hurricanes is warm sea surface temperatures > 27C (we can all agree on that, I hope); atmospheric conditions also need to be conducive (see the above comment on this year's rip - snorting season).

Both weather forecasters and climate experts have linked the high snowfall amounts to the exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures off the east coast.

* Warm sea surface temperatures.

(1) The warm sea surface temperatures are not just some short - term anomaly but are part of a long - term observed warming trend, in which ocean temperatures off the US east coast are warming faster than global average temperatures.

SSTs tend to be anomalously cool in the central North Pacific coincident with unusually warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) along the west coast of the Americas.»

Over ocean stretches with a positive SST anomaly air convection is higher (as the temperature difference between the warm sea surface and the cool air higher up in the troposphere is greater), so a higher likelihood for the formation of depressions exists and more precipitation is to be expected.

Warm sea surface temperature anomalies can also warn natural resource managers where coral reefs may be in danger of bleaching.

Previous research has shown that warm sea surface temperatures could encourage hurricanes to form.

Hurricanes derive their power from warm sea surface temperatures (Emanuel at al., 2005) and the oceans have been warming because of human greenhouse gas emissions (Abraham et al., 2013).

«One of the major modes of climate variability is El Niño and when we're in El Niño there's a large area of warm sea surface temps in the Pacific,» this leads to more precipitation on the West Coast, Crouch said.

For example, warm sea surface temperatures make it more likely for an El Niño to occur, but can not be used to predict El Niños with absolute certainty, Levine said.

To see if that could be the case, Hartmann used climate models, where he could plug in the warm sea surface temperatures and see if the East - West pattern followed.

The periods of intense hurricanes uncovered by the new research were driven in part by intervals of warm sea surface temperatures that previous research has shown occurred during these time periods, according to the new study.

While tropical hurricane intensity is primarily driven by latent heat from warm sea surface temperatures, an extra-tropical storm is primarily driven by baroclinic processes (differences in the pressure gradient) such as the gradient due to the contrast between the warm Gulf Stream and cold continental air mass.

While Trenberth only draws your attention to anomalously warm sea surface temperatures, the east coast was experiencing record cold temperatures that increased the pressure gradient.

An important reason for all of the snowfall is the abnormally warm sea surface temperatures off southern New England's coast.

Landsea said that NOAA's seasonal outlooks focused on the other pieces of the puzzle that argued in favor of an above average to average season, namely the absence of El Nino and the presence of warm sea surface temperatures.

We now have the first results for our Climatological simulations, investigating the influence of removing the «blob» of warm sea surface temperatures off the western US coast.

The record warm sea surface and atmosphere held a never before seen excess of water vapor and moisture in suspension — primarily over the Equatorial Ocean zones.

Hurricanes are very complex beasts, but the energy source is the warm sea surface.

What keeps the hurricane going is the cold upper atmosphere and the warm sea surface (and a warm mixed layer of the upper ocean will sustain the hurricane)-- just like a Carnot heat engine.

Fig. 2 shows predictions with a simple model that predicts the number of tropical cyclones (NTC and n) in the North Atlantic based on the area of warm sea surface (A) and the NINO3.4 index.

The warm sea surface temperatures in the gyres, during hiatus decades, indicate convergence of near - surface currents and strong downwelling of heat.

The record - breaking year of 2005 had below - average dust over the Atlantic, very warm sea surface temperatures, and an unprecedented four hurricanes that reached category 5, the highest classification.

(1) The warm sea surface temperatures are not just some short - term anomaly but are part of a long - term observed warming trend, in which ocean temperatures off the US east coast are warming faster than global average temperatures.

The study stops short of attributing California's latest drought to changes in Arctic sea ice, partly because there are other phenomena that play a role, like warm sea surface temperatures and changes to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, an atmospheric climate pattern that typically shifts every 20 to 30 years.

Warm sea surface temperature anomalies persist off to W and SW of San Diego, but are smaller than in previous weeks over the past month.

«We expected the storm would definitely get stronger because of much warmer sea surface temperature,» Lau said.

The research, an analysis of sea salt sodium levels in mountain ice cores, finds that warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean have intensified the Aleutian Low pressure system that drives storm activity in the North Pacific.

The future of the currents, whether slowing, stopping or reversing (as was observed during several months measurements), could have a profound effect on regional weather patterns — from colder winters in Europe to a much warmer Caribbean (and hence warmer sea surface temperatures to feed hurricanes).

«With warmer sea surface temperatures beneath the cloud, the coalescence process that produces precipitation becomes more efficient,» team member Richard S. Lindsen of M.I.T. explains.

Analyzing data collected over a 20 - month period, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the number of cirrus clouds above the Pacific Ocean declines with warmer sea surface temperatures.

A second study, led by Hailan Wang of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, used different model simulations and came to a similar conclusion: While a warming sea surface did make it more likely that a high - pressure ridge could form, the signal was not strong enough to explain its extreme nature.

El Niño causes higher sea level pressure, warmer air temperature and warmer sea surface temperature in west Antarctica that affect sea ice distribution.

Moreover, warmer sea surface temperatures may change the frequency and intensity of those storms.

[21] More male pups are produced than female pups in years with warmer sea surface temperature in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

Much of the recent sea ice loss is attributed to warmer sea surface temperatures with southerly wind anomalies a contributing cause [Francis and Hunter, 2007; Sorteberg and Kvingedal, 2006], with thermodynamic coupling leading to associated increases in atmospheric moisture.»

Perhaps more importantly, the paper in no way challenges the Emanuel (2005) study demonstrating a close linkage between warming sea surface temperatures and hurricane intensity for the Atlantic.

It simply argues that impacts of changes in wind shear could at least partially offset increases due to warming sea surface temperatures.

The second aspect of climate change that is likely affecting Alaska more and more is the apparent tendency of warming in the Arctic and warmer sea surface temperatures in the Pacific to contribute to larger waves in the jet stream.

The AARI data include drifting stations and ice information, although not the majority (my fault to see that as «main»), that means that the difference between only land based and total is in warmer sea surface temperatures.

Unlike hurricanes that are powered by latent heat from warm sea surfaces, extra-tropical winter storms along the eastern seaboard are primarily powered by the pressure gradient produced by the contrast between the cold continent and warm Gulf Stream.

The intense prehistoric hurricanes were fueled in part by warmer sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean during the ancient period investigated than have been the norm off the U.S. East Coast over the last few hundred years, according to the study.

It seems that the El Niño - related warmer sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific in late winter cause deep convection patterns to shift eastward.

Moreover, warmer sea surface temperatures may change the frequency and intensity of those storms.