This Atlantic hurricane season is looking like a dud, but there will be a price to pay - Ars Technica
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The city of Houston, where I live, has been ground zero for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season. So far this year there have been two named storms, Arthur and Bertha, that have formed. And the centers of both have passed near or directly over Houston.
Two “strikes” in a year might seem notable, but like the middling hurricane season to date, Arthur and Bertha were both middle-of-the road tropical storms in terms of intensity.
As a resident of a coastal region prone to hurricanes, one never wants to tempt fate. And in truth, since it is only early August, the bulk of seasonal activity definitely lies ahead of us. But all indications are we can look forward to a quiet season.
Why this season should be below normal
Why? First, there’s the start. By the metric of “accumulated cyclone energy,” a good measurement of overall intensity and duration of tropical systems, this year’s value to date is less than 30 percent of where things normally are. Historically, the Atlantic basin has usually seen three or four named storms by now, with one of those becoming a hurricane.
Additionally, this is almost the time of year when the Atlantic season starts to ramp up. However, things look very quiet for at least the next week or 10 days, and there is no evidence of a bunch of menacing tropical waves starting to emerge off the coast of Africa.
The leading seasonal hurricane forecaster, Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University, has steadily been revising his outlook downward. In April, he and his team predicted 13 named storms and six hurricanes this season. In his latest, and final, outlook issued Wednesday, he is predicting nine named storms and four hurricanes. He expects the season’s accumulated cyclone energy to only be about 40 percent of normal levels.
This would be a well-below-normal season, and certainly a welcome one for coastal residents in the United States from South Texas to Florida to Maine.
El Niño is very rapidly strengthening
The primary reason is the strengthening El Niño in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which has global weather impacts. Among them is higher wind shear across the Atlantic basin, where a majority of hurricanes form and strengthen.
“We are extremely confident that we will have a strong El Niño for the peak of hurricane season,” Klotzbach said in his latest update. “We anticipate the powerful El Niño being the dominant factor for the upcoming hurricane season, driving very high levels of tropical Atlantic vertical wind shear. We are forecasting a well below-average probability for major hurricane landfalls along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean.”
Fewer storms do not mean zero storms, of course. And we very probably will see a handful of serious threats later in August, and during September and October. But the Atlantic seems unlikely to turn into Grand Central Station, with hurricanes tracking hither and thither with hyper intensities.
All of that is well and good, but North America—and much of the rest of the planet—is likely to pay a price for a quieter Atlantic season. That’s because this year’s El Niño is not only likely to be strong, it could also become one of the strongest recorded in the last century or so.
There’s always a catch
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who writes at The Climate Brink newsletter, wrote a few weeks ago about emerging data that indicates it is possible this year’s El Niño will be off the charts.
“The multi-model median for the event’s peak currently stands at 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record of 2.75C set in 2015-16,” he said. “For context, the gap between the strongest and the fifth strongest El Niño of the past 150 years is only about 0.5C. The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.”
El Niño has varying impacts around the world (i.e., lower vertical wind shear in the Atlantic), but one thing is consistent. It adds additional fuel to global temperatures already rising due to climate change. This warming impact typically lags the peak of El Niño by several months, so the bulk of global heating will be observed in 2027.
This means that global temperatures next year will almost certainly be the hottest ever, further destabilizing our planet’s environment. And it may not be close.
Eric Berger
Senior Space Editor
Eric Berger
Senior Space Editor
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering...