Hurricane Season and El Nino Predicted to Coincide in 2012
El Nino has been predicted to develop over the coming few months, which could result in a quiet hurricane season, meteorologists have reported this week.
There has been three years since the last El Nino, but it is now felt by experts that a trend is forming that will see the climate pattern return this year.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Brett Anderson has said, "We're not officially there yet, but we are trending towards an El Nino."
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The El Nino climate pattern is a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean water, and has a knock on affect on weather patterns around the globe. If the El Nino pattern does emerge in the coming months, the Atlantic hurricane season could be suppressed. This is because such an event brings the strong upper-level winds and high wind shear to the topical Atlantic. Wind shear tends to help dissipate tropical storm weather before they can grow stronger and develop into fully fledged hurricanes.
At the moment some experts are predicting El Nino by September, which coincides with the Atlantic hurricane season; potentially good news for those affected by tropical storms and hurricanes driven in from the Atlantic.
However, the early part of the hurricane season may come too early to be affected, meaning hurricane activity and storms could still be seen in August and early September.
So far no named storms have hit in the Atlantic throughout the whole of July, which is unusually. If the month plays out the same then July could be the first since 2009 there have been no named storms to occur.
However, meteorologists have also reminded people that El Nino also tends to produce wetter and cooler-than-average weather across the southern tier of the USA and warmer and drier-than-average conditions across the northern half of the country.
