2020 Indicators: SST's / SAL / MSLP / Steering / Shear / Instability / Sat Images

[CyclonicFury]

I know this graphic is glitched, but "Tropical Atlantic THDV" has already reached levels it did not reach until late August last year. Considering the issues with this graphic, tropical Atlantic instability is likely above normal right now.

2019


2020

[SFLcane]

Wow! Don’t think I’ve ever seen the mdr this active in June convection wise. These waves are impressive in a few weeks we could have problems.

[aspen]

Wow! Don’t think I’ve ever seen the mdr this active in June convection wise. These waves are impressive in a few weeks we could have problems.

https://i.imgur.com/uHAo6nd.gif

At this rate, it’s quite likely we’ll get an early MDR hurricane like Beryl ‘18 this year, probably in the first half of July.

[SFLcane]

Wow! Don’t think I’ve ever seen the mdr this active in June convection wise. These waves are impressive in a few weeks we could have problems.

https://i.imgur.com/uHAo6nd.gif

At this rate, it’s quite likely we’ll get an early MDR hurricane like Beryl ‘18 this year, probably in the first half of July.

Yea.. definitely a possibility.

[JetFuel_SE]

Wow! Don’t think I’ve ever seen the mdr this active in June convection wise. These waves are impressive in a few weeks we could have problems.

https://i.imgur.com/uHAo6nd.gif

I think some of the energy in that wave is related to 92A (ARB 01).

[NDG]

I know this graphic is glitched, but "Tropical Atlantic THDV" has already reached levels it did not reach until late August last year. Considering the issues with this graphic, tropical Atlantic instability is likely above normal right now.

2019
https://i.imgur.com/pCaKw0K_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

2020
https://i.imgur.com/s70oLJ9_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

Definitely the tropical atlantic is more unstable than last year.

[TheStormExpert]

This has to be the most convectively active the Tropical Atlantic has looked in years! Maybe even more so than 2017. I’m surprised we haven’t seen something attempt to develop yet similar or close to Bret in 2017 or something.

[JetFuel_SE]

:uarrow: This has to be the most convectively active the Tropical Atlantic has looked in years! Maybe even more so than 2017. I’m surprised we haven’t seen something attempt to develop yet similar or close to Bret in 2017 or something.

We still have 2½ weeks left for something to happen.

[ScottNAtlanta]

That wave that just came off the coast actually looks like it has some rotation

[Shell Mound]

Product is definitely glitched. It freaked me out too, don't worry. Here's the full list of archived dates: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/fulllist.php

Note the one day difference between June 5th and June 6th.

https://i.imgur.com/XwVxHuC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/PZkJuaq.jpg

On the other hand, is it possible that climate change has resulted in much higher TCHP/OHC in 2020 than, say, in 2005 or 2010? Note how the volume and extent of TCHP seems to increase from 2005 to 2010 and thence to 2017. Additionally, note that the level of convection and vorticity in the ITCZ, even in light of an active AEJ/WAM, is very significant for mid-June, especially with a suppressed phase of the MJO currently in place. The only thing that would seem to account for this is unusually high TCHP/OHC, greater even than was present at this time in 2005, 2010, and 2017. So maybe the “scary” chart is closer to the reality than the subsequent “correction.” I find the difference between the original and “corrected” chart, including the outline and extent of TCHP/OHC contours, to be much greater than any modelling “error” would imply.

[CyclonicFury]

Product is definitely glitched. It freaked me out too, don't worry. Here's the full list of archived dates: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/fulllist.php

Note the one day difference between June 5th and June 6th.

https://i.imgur.com/XwVxHuC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/PZkJuaq.jpg

On the other hand, is it possible that climate change has resulted in much higher TCHP/OHC in 2020 than, say, in 2005 or 2010? Note how the volume and extent of TCHP seems to increase from 2005 to 2010 and thence to 2017. Additionally, note that the level of convection and vorticity in the ITCZ, even in light of an active AEJ/WAM, is very significant for mid-June, especially with a suppressed phase of the MJO currently in place. The only thing that would seem to account for this is unusually high TCHP/OHC, greater even than was present at this time in 2005, 2010, and 2017. So maybe the “scary” chart is closer to the reality than the subsequent “correction.” I find the difference between the original and “corrected” chart, including the outline and extent of TCHP/OHC contours, to be much greater than any modelling “error” would imply.

I don't think this is a climate change signal but rather a problem with the TCHP product. Until June 6 or so TCHP was fairly similar to 2017 and less than 2005/2010.

[Shell Mound]

Product is definitely glitched. It freaked me out too, don't worry. Here's the full list of archived dates: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/fulllist.php

Note the one day difference between June 5th and June 6th.

https://i.imgur.com/XwVxHuC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/PZkJuaq.jpg

On the other hand, is it possible that climate change has resulted in much higher TCHP/OHC in 2020 than, say, in 2005 or 2010? Note how the volume and extent of TCHP seems to increase from 2005 to 2010 and thence to 2017. Additionally, note that the level of convection and vorticity in the ITCZ, even in light of an active AEJ/WAM, is very significant for mid-June, especially with a suppressed phase of the MJO currently in place. The only thing that would seem to account for this is unusually high TCHP/OHC, greater even than was present at this time in 2005, 2010, and 2017. So maybe the “scary” chart is closer to the reality than the subsequent “correction.” I find the difference between the original and “corrected” chart, including the outline and extent of TCHP/OHC contours, to be much greater than any modelling “error” would imply.

I don't think this is a climate change signal but rather a problem with the TCHP product. Until June 6 or so TCHP was fairly similar to 2017 and less than 2005/2010.

Yes, but Luis (cycloneye) posted three-day TCHP data that closely matched the NOAA products after 6 June 2020. Are the two sources using different datasets or not? Anyway, is it not reasonable to suppose that the warming of the global tropics due to climate change also affects TCHP, resulting in overall increases in TCHP from 2005 to 2020, perhaps even exponentially over time? Is it also possible that the NOAA products were too low with TCHP prior to 6 June 2020 and that the more ominous data since then are actually correct, that is, we are surpassing TCHP at this time in 2005/2010 as well?

[TheAustinMan]

For comparison, here are the last five years of surface analyses for the MDR on June 14. At least with the analyses, it appears the tropical waves out there right now have quite anomalous amplitude for this time of year:

549 KB. Source: TAFB Surface Analysis Archives


Regarding the rapid change in tropical cyclone heat potential between June 5 and June 6, that seems to arise from a change in the way the depth of the 26C isotherm is calculated. I'm a little surprised that we haven't heard anything from AOML about that, but I suspect we'll get some sort of update eventually.

[hurricanes1234]

For comparison, here are the last five years of surface analyses for the MDR on June 14. At least with the analyses, it appears the tropical waves out there right now have quite anomalous amplitude for this time of year:

549 KB. Source: TAFB Surface Analysis Archives
https://i.imgur.com/abIa2pd.png

Regarding the rapid change in tropical cyclone heat potential between June 5 and June 6, that seems to arise from a change in the way the depth of the 26C isotherm is calculated. I'm a little surprised that we haven't heard anything from AOML about that, but I suspect we'll get some sort of update eventually.

Thank you so much!! This is exactly what I was looking for.

[drezee]

For comparison, here are the last five years of surface analyses for the MDR on June 14. At least with the analyses, it appears the tropical waves out there right now have quite anomalous amplitude for this time of year:

549 KB. Source: TAFB Surface Analysis Archives
https://i.imgur.com/abIa2pd.png

Regarding the rapid change in tropical cyclone heat potential between June 5 and June 6, that seems to arise from a change in the way the depth of the 26C isotherm is calculated. I'm a little surprised that we haven't heard anything from AOML about that, but I suspect we'll get some sort of update eventually.

Pressure pattern is lower as well. Even lower than 2017.

[TheAustinMan]

Tropical instability is one ingredient in the formation of storms in the Main Development Region—but since it's only one ingredient, simply looking at a chart of instability wouldn't tell you whether a season was active or not. Nonetheless, high instability tends to lead to strong convection, and for that reason the tropical Atlantic vertical instability chart gets a lot of usage in the weather world. I saw CyclonicFury above post the comparison between now and 2019, so I wanted to expand on that by compositing in a whole bunch of recent years. This patchwork image was made from old posts about tropical instability, but unfortunately since people don't tend to post this chart during the peak season/late season, there's not a whole lot to see there. I also took out the broken climatological average line, since I think it's pretty misleading (I've talked about this previously)—I think you can probably get a sense of a recent "average" from the plot below.

As it stands, right now tropical instability is higher than it has ever been in the last eight years for mid-June. I wouldn't obsess so much over the precise values since they can rise and fall pretty rapidly in a matter of days, but it gives us one indication of how favorable the region is to convection.

44 KB. Source: Made from a bunch of images online, but the data was originally from the Tropical Cyclone Formation Probability Product

[TheStormExpert]

Tropical instability is one ingredient in the formation of storms in the Main Development Region—but since it's only one ingredient, simply looking at a chart of instability wouldn't tell you whether a season was active or not. Nonetheless, high instability tends to lead to strong convection, and for that reason the tropical Atlantic vertical instability chart gets a lot of usage in the weather world. I saw CyclonicFury above post the comparison between now and 2019, so I wanted to expand on that by compositing in a whole bunch of recent years. This patchwork image was made from old posts about tropical instability, but unfortunately since people don't tend to post this chart during the peak season/late season, there's not a whole lot to see there. I also took out the broken climatological average line, since I think it's pretty misleading (I've talked about this previously)—I think you can probably get a sense of a recent "average" from the plot below.

As it stands, right now tropical instability is higher than it has ever been in the last eight years for mid-June. I wouldn't obsess so much over the precise values since they can rise and fall pretty rapidly in a matter of days, but it gives us one indication of how favorable the region is to convection.

44 KB. Source: Made from a bunch of images online, but the data was originally from the Tropical Cyclone Formation Probability Product
https://i.imgur.com/LyttezW.png

I notice that they’re more lines than the past seven years, am I seeing things correctly?

[toad strangler]

No real perfect thread to throw this in so here it goes. Interesting graphic for sure. Look at that re-curve climatology at work. Storms almost always want to re-curve. It's just a matter of WHEN & WHERE. There are exceptions of course.

 http://twitter.com/burgwx/status/1272235780056940545

[USTropics]

Here are some experimental products I've been working on. These are precipitation rate anomalies (may forecast for JAS compared to June forecast for JAS). This is using plotly, jupyter, and some python code. Data files are from Copernicus data store in netcdf format:

NCEP May forecast

NCEP June forecast


ECMWF May forecast

ECMWF June forecast


UKMET May forecast

UKMET June forecast


Meteo-France May forecast

Meteo-France June forecast


DWD May forecast

DWD June forecast


CMC May forecast

CMC June forecast

[Shell Mound]

Regarding the rapid change in tropical cyclone heat potential between June 5 and June 6, that seems to arise from a change in the way the depth of the 26C isotherm is calculated.

What made you suspect that is the case? Do you have a link to the evidence? I would certainly be interested in viewing it.