The 2022 hurricane season will be above normal, according to forecasts from Colorado State University’s Phil Klotzbach, the respected student of Bill Gray, who started long-range hurricane forecasts decades ago.
This should be headline news, right? Actually, within some pretty broad limits these types of seasonal forecasts are of only marginal utility. If I lived in a hurricane-prone region (I do), this wouldn’t prompt me to do anything different than any prudent resident normally does in preparation for any season. Nor would the latest forecast from IBM’s Weather.Com, which says pretty much the same thing, and the yet-unreleased version from the Department of Commerce change my routine.
These kinds of forecasts might also prompt the usual fearmongers to caterwaul about global warming jacking up hurricanes, but tropical meteorologist Ryan Maue has made a career by pointing out there is simply no relationship between the frequency and power of these storms and global warming. His “Accumulated Cyclone Energy” (ACE) index covers every storm detected since satellite coverage became global more than 50 years ago, and its correlation with mean surface temperature hovers near zero.
