Wrap-Up of 2006-2007 Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity

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Well, it's April 30, which means that for most of the Southern Hemisphere, hurricane season just ended. It hasn't been a particularly busy year for any of the Southern Hemisphere cyclone regions except the Southwest Indian Ocean, which took one hell of a beating (see above; image courtesy of Meteo France).

Let's look at the two other relevant regions first. Different divisions are possible, but Wikipedia breaks them into the Australian region and the South Pacific. During the 2006-2007 season, each of these areas saw relatively little activity, save for one kickass storm apiece. For the Australian region that storm was Cyclone George (officially at Category 3 although I suspect it may have been stronger); for the South Pacific, it's Category 4 Cyclone Xavier.

But one strong storm hardly makes for a very busy year in either of these regions. If you compare what we saw in 2007 to South Pacific activity in 2005--when four Category 4 or 5 storms occurred in the short space of about a month--it's clear this year was far quieter. Similarly, if you compare 2007 to Australian region activity in 2006--when a very large number of intense storms were also seen, including two Category 5s--it was, again, a quiet year this year.

When I was in Melbourne recently, I got to hear the chief scientist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Dr. Neville Smith, give a breakfast presentation about the agency's work. When I stood up at the end and asked about the 2007 cyclone season and why it had been so inactive in the region, Dr. Smith noted that that's what's expected during El Nino years, like the one we just had. But my understanding is that even for El Nino conditions, it was really pretty quiet for cyclones down under this year. (Granted, the people who got slammed by Cyclone George in Port Hedland might beg to differ.)

But of course, for the Southern Hemisphere, the people who got it worst this year from tropical cyclones were the Malagasies (or is it "Madagascans"?). Madagascar is in a state of crisis because it was directly struck or otherwise affected by no less than six storms during the 2006-2007 season, including a number of very powerful ones. That goes to show you just how active it was in the Southwest Indian basin: There were 4 Category 4s (Bondo, Dora, Favio, and Indlala) and 2 Cateory 3s (Gamede and Jaya, although again, I suspect Jaya could have been stronger).

All of which now allows us to summarize intense storm activity for the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2006-2007. First of all, unlike during the previous two seasons, there wasn't a single Category 5 storm. Moving down the intensity scale, there were 5 total Category 4s, and 3 total Category 3s. In my view, two of those Category 3s may also have been Category 4s, but in any event, they are not officially so designated at this point. (In this context it's rather fitting that an article in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society suggests scrapping the familiar Saffir-Simpson scale and replacing it with a scale more sensitive to storm size variations and their considerable implications.)

Over all, one can only conclude that except in the Southwest Indian region, 2007 was on the quiet side for the Southern Hemisphere as a whole. To be sure, one shouldn't draw any overly ambitious conclusions about this fact, any more than one should draw overarching conclusions on the basis of the relatively quiet 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. There's huge natural variability within and between hurricane basins. Any basin in any year can do pretty much anything.

So now things shift to the far more active Northern Hemisphere, which typically sees twice as much total tropical cyclone activity as the Southern. It will be interesting to see whether our hemisphere, over all, compensates in 2007 for the somewhat quiet season south of the equator. I'll be following this question closely. We'll begin to get more of a sense of what to expect starting May 4, when the next of the forecasts for the Atlantic in 2007 comes out....

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As Cyclone Favio makes landfall in an already flooded Mozambique--striking the provinces of Inhambane and Sofala as a Category 3--I am prompted to reflect a bit on what the South Indian cyclone season of 2006-2007 has shown us so far. There have now been three storms that we can classify as…
Cyclone Dora, in the South Indian basin, was estimated to have 75 knot or about 86 mile per hour maximum sustained winds in the latest advisory from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. That's significantly stronger than any storm yet in 2007, and Dora is expected to intensify further. The storm does…
Cyclone Monica on April 24, 2006, possibly the strongest recorded hurricane in the Southern Hemisphere. So: According to Jeff Masters, there were 21 Category 4 or 5 hurricanes globally in 2006. Zero of them were in the Atlantic, which makes the total number sound even more staggering. I actually…
[Image courtesy of Meteo-France (click for full-size version) showing the tracks of tropical cyclones in the South Indian ocean during the 2006-2007 season. Note that cyclones 3 (Bondo), 5 (Clovis), 12 (Indlala), and 14 (Jaya) made direct landfalls in Madagascar. Cyclones 9 (Favio) and 10 (Gamede…

Chris,

Here is something which may be of interest to your readers:

Real Climate ("Climate science from climate scientists") will be going over the international climate change report IPCC AR4 chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. They have just started.

To find out more about the people behind Real Climate, please see:

Real Climate - Contributor Bios
www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10

They are just starting. This looks like an informal minicourse - and it is open to those who are interested...

Please see:

RealClimate
http://www.realclimate.org

The climate report itself is available for download.

*

Incidently, the projected changes in hurricane trends is a recurrent subject at Real Climate, with in depth analysis of the technical papers in the area as they come out.

By Timothy Chase (not verified) on 30 Apr 2007 #permalink

Um, yeah, we all know about RealClimate here--if I've just published a comment that is essentially an advertisement for them, that's because I like them so much!

But in general, let's stay on topic here....

Advertisement? Yeah, I guess so.

I just discovered them maybe a little over a week ago. I have been more into evolutionary biology, but I am getting interested in climate change, and I am already beginning to learn a fair amount there. I am starting to collect the technical papers. Climate change is going to affect us all in some pretty dramatic ways. Anyway, these guys seem like they are really on-the-ball.

Anyway, thank you!

By Timothy Chase (not verified) on 30 Apr 2007 #permalink

You've dealt with how Madagascar has been taking a beating these past couple years.

I had the chance to visit there during the 1980s. A beautiful place. The people there primarily speak french, but they also know some english. It is fairly poor - their economy was heavily reliant upon sugar exports, and when sugar prices dropped it hit their economy pretty hard. When I visited, I found out that the people had a nickname for their money: "Mikey Mouse money" because it was next to worthless. The government made it illegal to hold foreign currency for fear of the citizens switching to something else.

The people are better educated than you might think. I knew a girl who was taking calculus. They are also quite friendly. Complete strangers asked me if I wished to sit down to dinner with them. In any case, I am sorry to see them getting hit this way. They are good people, but they don't really have the resources to fall back on at this point.

By Timothy Chase (not verified) on 30 Apr 2007 #permalink

Assuming there are no late-season cyclones (May cyclones are rare but not unknown), the Australian region will have had its equal-quietest season since at least 1941-42.

The interesting thing with the ENSO signal is that what we typically see in an El Nino year is an eastward displacement of activity, with lower activity near the Australian coast and more out into the central Pacific. This year we saw suppressed activity in the Australian sector but no corresponding increase further east.

By Blair Trewin (not verified) on 30 Apr 2007 #permalink