Agulhas Leakage and SSTs - a link with recent hurricane seas

[chrisjslucia]

Scientific reports from the US and Europe are suggesting the Agulhas Leakage is increasing. This flow from the Indian Ocean contributes to SSTs in the Caribbean and the link below shows how this impacts month by month over a year. Are there any reports, thoughts as to whether this increased Agulhas activity could impact on hurricane formation / seasonal activity?
I'm just a Curious Non-met, non-scientific islander!!

But the short video is well worth checking...

http://act.rsmas.miami.edu/motivation.html

Chris J

[Aquawind]

Interesting.. Any increase in SST's in the Caribbean would certainly help intensity. Maybe it is having a larger part on the reason we are seeing more systems in the SA though in recent years..

[AJC3]

Interesting.. Any increase in SST's in the Caribbean would certainly help intensity. Maybe it is having a larger part on the reason we are seeing more systems in the SA though in recent years..

I doubt there's an increase in occurrence. I think it's more likely a function of people actually looking in that area now. In fact, there was a recent systematic study (Braun, 2008) that went back and looked at the SATLC and found a total of 92 SATLC STS's from 1957 - 2007 (using ECM data reconstruction). Some of these may actually have been considered TCs if they were looked at even more closely. Of course, this isn't possible for those STS's identified as having occurred during the pre-GOES, or at least the pre-POES era.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/137689.pdf