The forecast team at Colorado State now says we're going to have a below average hurricane year in the Atlantic. They admit their last foreast for August was a "bust", because they had been unable to anticipate the high levels of African dust in the air that have been choking off storms, and the dryness in middle levels of the atmosphere. Gray and Klotzbach add that it looks more and more like El Nino conditions may be shaping up in the Pacific--and sure enough, we are seeing a lot of tropical storm activity over on the other side of Mexico. El Ninos tend to enhance Pacific hurricane activity but to generate wind shear that suppresses storms in the Atlantic.
We'll have to see what the other forecasters have to say as well--but remember, El Nino type conditions don't necessarily mean the U.S. is entirely off the hook. For example, now Jeff Masters is talking about Hurricane John potentially bringing tropical storm conditions up to San Diego, something that is very rare but less unlikely in an El Nino year, with warmer sea temperatures extending further northward in the Pacific. Believe it or not, San Diego has actually been hit before by hurricane force winds, although it was way back in 1858, before the publication of The Origin of Species.
Nevertheless, as you can see in the image below of model runs for John's track provided by Kerry Emanuel's helpful website, a more northward trajectory is definitely within the range of possibilities (although John would presumably weaken steadily along this course):
It will be really weird if I arrive in San Diego on September 6, ready to start the book tour, just after a tropical storm has passed....
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Hmm..you might think of it as God's War on your War on the Republican's War on Science...or something.
Anyway, I came here to muse about Hanson's (aborted?) prediction of a Super El Nino this year, which had looked pretty far out there when Roger Pielke Jr brought it up some months ago.
link
That paper is a draft. You should link Roger's seemingly chastened follow-up as well, which left me with the impression that Hansen did not intend such broad distribution of his draft. I am in favor of open peer review, but Roger's method of providing it, deliberate or not, is counter-productive.
llewelly-
Please read Hansen's email. He sent his paper to his full email distribution list (by mistake), which includes reporters, policy makers, etc. Obviously, Hansen's material sent out via this distribution list is public information. Once Jim recognized his mistake, he sent a follow up email which I promptly posted on our blog.
Substantively, no one is yet calling for a super-El Nino! But if one does occur I am sure that Hansen will wish that he had stuck to his original views.
Thanks.
Predictions for hurricane tracking in the Eastern Pacific are very unreliable. I can speak from eight years of watching them as a sailor on the west coast of Mexico. Confirming that observation this year is the predicted tracking on John, which has moved significantly more easterly than the National Hurricane Center has predicted over the last several days. Part of the difficulty with tracking in the Eastern Pacific is the lack of longterm data compared to the Atlantic. (When I say significantly, I speak from the perspective of the likelihood of being hit -- not from a statistical point of view.)