El Niño hand in hand with warm sea surface temps? It’s ‘complicated’

The final tally on the Atlantic hurricane season may come down to a bitter tug of war between opposing drivers, leaving bets for an average season looking “complicated,” analysts at Munich Re have said.

Conditions in the North Atlantic are torn between an expected hurricane-suppressive El Niño and storm-supportive warm water temperatures.

“It is not yet clear which of two contrasting climate effects will gain the upper hand,” Munich Re analysts have said. Any reasonable forecast is “complicated by contrasting climate signals”.

For the time being, Munich Re is going along with prevailing forecasts for the array of mixed drivers to render a perfectly average season.

Basing its own estimates on forecasts from other leading institutions, Munich Re is working from a forecast for “some 12” named storms. of which “around six” could develop into hurricanes, and two into major hurricanes.

The estimate “more or less matches” prevailing forecasts and lines up well with the long-term annual average from 1950 to 2022 for 12.2 named storms including 6.4 hurricanes.

El Niño, capable of creating storm-scuttling wind shear, is forecast “with relative certainty” for the late summer months which make up hurricane high season.

But the total range of factors behind seasonal predictions remains broad and Munich Re warns that “insurers should therefore not make decisions based solely on the expected El Niño phase”.

If anything will whip up a major storm, it could be the sea surface temperatures. Current temperatures show “significant increase” from average and predictions anticipate readings up to 1°C above average from August to October.

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