Climate

Earth has a cow problem. Cow agriculture is one of the largest emitters of climate-warming methane to the atmosphere.

But adding a type of red algae known for its methane-inhibiting properties to cow feces might help. Doing so reduces the production of methane within feces by about 44 percent, researchers report July 13 in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. That offers a promising new avenue to reduce overall methane emissions from cattle, the scientists say.

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Cow agriculture is responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas (SN: 11/18/15; SN: 5/5/22). The cows make methane in their guts during digestion that is then released to the world, mostly via burps. A smaller — but not insignificant — amount of methane is also emitted directly from the cows’ feces during decomposition.

Researchers have been actively seeking solutions to the gut-produced methane. Adding just a pinch — 0.5 percent of the dry feed — of the red algae Asparagopsis taxiformis to the cows’ food can prevent about 65 percent of that methane production.

Ubiquitous in tropical ocean waters, A. taxiformis contains an organic compound called bromoform, which inactivates an enzyme that normally helps the methane reaction along. This research has raised concerns that the milk of dairy cows fed the algae may contain toxic levels of bromoform as well as iodine in their milk and meat. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has assessed bromoform as a probable human carcinogen, and too much iodine can cause thyroid malfunction.

The red algae species Asparagopsis taxiformis (pictured) produces an organic compound that interferes with bacterial methane production, including in cows’ guts and feces.Jean-Pascal Quod/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Mohammad Ramin, an animal scientist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå, and colleagues wondered whether it might be possible to cut out the middleman — by adding the algae directly to the cows’ poop. That wouldn’t reduce the gut-produced methane, but it might reduce overall cattle emissions without impacting meat or milk.

Methane emitted from feces is primarily a problem when it comes to dairy cows, says Sara Place, an animal scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who was not involved in the study. Dairy cows tend to be raised in environments with more oxygen-poor soils, and methane-producing bacteria thrive in such anaerobic environments. Cows raised for beef tend to live out their lives and defecate in open pasturelands or in an enclosed, but dry, feedlot, which is less conducive ground for methane production.

In the new study, Ramin and colleagues added algae to four dairy cows’ feces. Two had been fed the algae, and two hadn’t. Each fecal sample was divided further, with one subsample given additional algae and the other left alone. Then, all the fecal samples were allowed to incubate, slowly decomposing in the laboratory. After nine weeks, the team analyzed the subsamples to see how much methane they contained.

As expected, adding algae to the cows’ food did initially reduce methane in their poop. But once the poop began to decompose, the production of new methane wasn’t affected by whether the cows had eaten the algae or not. The team also examined the microbial communities living in the different types of poop, and they found that there wasn’t much difference between the algae-fed cows and the control cows. That suggests that algae food supplements aren’t that effective at inhibiting methane production outside the stomach.

But adding the algae directly to the feces did make a noticeable difference to methane coming from decomposition. That, the team says, suggests that this would be an effective part of the solution to the larger cow-methane problem.

The major strength of this new work is that it focuses on providing a solution to an understudied part of the cow-methane problem, says Christopher Glasson, a chemist at the University of Waikato in Tauranga, New Zealand, who studies agrichemicals derived from seaweed. But ultimately, he says, it may just not be cost-effective to produce A. taxiformis for this particular purpose. “I think [this strategy] is likely to be nonviable due to the cost of the production of the seaweed.”

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A. taxiformis may still be most effective at suppressing fermentation in a cow’s guts rather than in its manure. The good news, Glasson says, is that state-of-the-art feed additive technologies that use specific extracts from the algae rather than the whole biomass greatly mitigate the risk of iodine or bromoform toxicity.

And the study’s conclusion that algae in the cows’ feed doesn’t affect methane production in their feces might also be good news, in a way, Place says. One proposed avenue for mitigating emissions from cow feces is to harness the methane to make biogas. “If you feed [algae] to cattle for methane mitigation [and] if you don’t see any results [in the manure], that could be good for biogas production,” she adds — a possible two-fer for the industry.  More

The recent, record-breaking heat waves that have scorched the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, China and southern Europe were made dramatically more likely due to human-caused climate change, researchers report July 25 in a study from the World Weather Attribution network.

“This is absolutely not a surprise,” climate scientist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London said at a July 24 news briefing. But “while the weather is changing as expected, how much it hurts us is larger than expected.”

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These intense and at times deadly heat waves are occurring as high-pressure systems stall across the Northern Hemisphere, creating barely budging heat domes (SN: 7/19/23).  Phoenix, for example, has reached at least 43.3° C (110° Fahrenheit) every day for more than three weeks. 

Otto and her colleagues used computers to simulate Earth’s climate, with and without human-caused climate change, to assess how likely the recent heat waves would have been under different climate conditions.

In a world without climate change, they found, the recent extreme heat in China would be expected roughly once every 250 years. Now, it’s a once-in-five-years phenomenon, or 50 times more likely to occur. Meanwhile the extreme heat waves in southern Europe and North America, which would have been virtually impossible without climate change, are now likely to occur once every 10 years and 15 years, respectively.

Should climate warming reach 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, these events could occur every two to five years, the simulations showed. We’ve already warmed by at least 1.1 degrees C since then (SN: 12/22/22).

Though it’s still too early to pin down the human toll of these extreme events, hundreds of deaths have already been reported from regions around the world, and power shortage concerns grow as the demand for cooling surges.

“The risks are rising faster than we are adapting,” Otto said. “We are much more vulnerable than we might have liked to believe in the past.” More

The dog days of summer are upon us. Brutal heat waves are roasting regions around the globe, smashing records with unrelenting severity.

In the southwest United States and northern Mexico, devastating heat has been scorching the region for weeks. For 19 straight days and counting, temperatures in Phoenix have reached above 43.3° Celsius (110° Fahrenheit), surpassing a record streak from 1974. The Texas city of El Paso has endured an unprecedented 33 consecutive days of temperatures reaching over 37.8° C (100° F), and that streak is only expected to continue. And just after midnight on July 17, Death Valley, Calif., may have sweltered under the highest temperature ever recorded anywhere for that time: 48.9° C (120° F).

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China has also been enduring extreme heat for weeks. On July 16, the township of Sanbao broke not only the national record with a temperature of 52.2° C (126° F), but also the record for highest temperature above 40˚ N latitude. Meanwhile, southern Europe is in its second heat wave in a week, with Rome recording a new all-time high of 42.9° C (109.2° F) on July 18 while a town in Catalonia, Spain set a new record for the region, 45.3° C (113.5° F).

What’s concocting these bouts of extreme heat? It’s partly because the world has been exceptionally warm this year, thanks to the compounding of human-caused climate change with a natural climate phenomenon called El Niño, whose influence is known to temporarily warm our planet (SN: 7/13/23).

But it’s not just that Earth’s a hotter stovetop; the cooks have been busy. The jet streams, powerful ribbons of wind that control much of the planet’s weather, have been meandering and getting stuck, holding bulges of hot air over many parts of the Earth. While that’s not unusual, some scientists have suggested that climate change may be altering the dynamics of the consequential winds.

Here’s what we know about how climate change is impacting extreme heat and how these potentially dangerous events occur.

Extreme heat waves are becoming more likely

Let’s start with that hot stovetop. Humans have been warming the planet for decades by emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That’s made extreme heat waves more common, many researchers say.

Since 2004, scientists have conducted attribution studies to estimate how much climate change may have influenced the probability and severity of a specific bout of extreme weather. These studies essentially simulate the world with and without climate change to compare how often certain types of extreme weather events occur.

The work of the World Weather Attribution initiative has repeatedly indicated that climate change has made extreme weather events like heat waves more likely and more severe (SN: 4/11/22; SN: 7/7/21).

A May report concluded that an April heat wave in South Asia — during which locations in Thailand and Laos set new national temperature records of 45.4° C and 42.9° C, respectively — was made at least 30 times more likely due to climate change.

Another study suggested that a different heat wave in northern Africa and southwestern Europe, which subjected some areas to temperatures 20 degrees C higher than is normal in April, was at least 100 times more likely due to climate change.

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Climate change is pushing heat waves in general to have higher temperatures, but it’s having a particularly strong impact on the frequency of the most extreme events, says atmospheric scientist Noboru Nakamura of the University of Chicago.

“What used to be once every 1,000 years might now occur every 20 years,” he says. “It’s still a rare event, but … you can actually feel that in our daily lives.”

How heat waves form

What’s actually whipping up these summer scorchers, and why are only certain regions getting roasted?

The answer lies roughly 8 to 14 kilometers high in the sky. There, the jet streams flow at about 177 kilometers per hour on average, though they can reach speeds of more than 400 kilometers per hour — faster than a Shinkansen bullet train.

These powerful winds control much of Earth’s weather by transporting high- and low-pressure systems around the world.

Jet streams develop where large masses of air with different temperatures meet, flowing faster where the temperature contrast is stronger. When jet streams are blowing strong, they tend to orient themselves more parallel to the equator, says atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. “But when those winds get weaker … then we tend to see the jet stream take these bigger meanders.”

When the jet stream meanders, it forms broad waves, with crests and troughs that reach north and south for hundreds of kilometers. Jet streams in the northern and southern hemispheres typically undulate more during their respective summers. Due to Earth’s axial tilt, polar regions receive more warming sunlight during their summers, weakening their temperature contrast with the tropics. As the waves become amplified, high- and low-pressure systems in the crests and troughs encroach farther north and south. Sometimes these pressure systems become stuck over one spot for days to weeks, causing weather to persist over a region.

When a high-pressure system gets stuck over an area, it pushes air down toward the surface, compressing and warming the air. The high pressure also pushes clouds away, clearing the sky for the hot sun to beat down unabated. These factors compound to produce a heat dome, a phenomenon that scorches and often dries landscapes.

Jet streams are mostly high-velocity wind currents (shown in red and purple) that often flow at the altitudes passenger planes frequent. When the currents form broad crests and troughs (one shown over the eastern United States), the winds can weaken (slow winds are shown in green). Swirling high-pressure systems (one shown over the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico) can get stuck over areas, generating persistent heat. The city of Phoenix is indicated by the green dot. This graphic shows jet stream activity on July 18.N. Ogasa, C. Beccario/earth.nullschool.net

Source: GFS/NCEP/NOAA

An exception is when heat domes form by coastlines — such as the one that has formed by the U.S. Gulf Coast. Since warmer air can carry more moisture, heat domes near the ocean can make for weather that is both hot and humid, a potentially lethal combination for humans (SN: 7/27/22).

It’s a bit of a mystery why pressure systems become stuck, Nakamura says, making the phenomenon difficult to predict. It may occur when jet streams become especially wavy, he and a colleague reported in 2018 in Science. The waves may get stuck like cars in a traffic jam, causing weather to idle in place.

But this explanation is a theoretical one, and more evidence is needed to validate it, Nakamura says. Until then, he says, the underlying mechanics of those jams will remain elusive.

The jet streams’ uncertain future

A related, but similarly unresolved, problem is how climate change may affect the dance of the jet streams in the future. In 2012, Francis and a colleague proposed climate change could make the powerful winds more wobbly.

“The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the globe as a whole,” Francis says. “That means that the north-south temperature difference has been getting weaker and weaker.” As a result, jet streams may be becoming more unstable, she says, and more prone to meandering.

But that’s still “a very hotly contested hypothesis,” Nakamura says, pointing out that some climate simulations have suggested that in the Northern Hemisphere, the jet stream may actually become less wavy. “There is not a widely accepted consensus on this,” Nakamura says.

Even if the fate of the jet streams remains up in the air, one thing seems clear: Extreme heat waves aren’t going anywhere. More

McKenzie Prillaman was the Spring 2023 science writing intern at Science News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience with a minor in bioethics from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. More

Something strange is happening to the Antarctic’s sea ice. The areal expanse of floating ice fringing the continent is not only at a record low for this time of year — surpassing a record just set in 2022 — but ice extent has been hitting record lows throughout the year.

“What’s happened here is unlike the Arctic sea ice expanse,” says Mark Serreze, a climate scientist and the director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, or NSIDC, in Boulder, Colo. We’ve come to expect a dramatic decline in sea ice at Earth’s other pole, he says (SN: 9/25/19). “Not much has happened to Antarctica’s sea ice until the last few years. But it’s just plummeted.”

NSIDC uses satellite-gleaned data, collected daily, to keep an eye on the spread of sea ice at both poles. Throughout most of 2023, the ring of sea ice around Antarctica has repeatedly set new record lows, staying well below the average extent from 1981 to 2010. On February 21 — the height of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer — the sea ice expanse hit an all-time low since record-keeping began in 1978, of 1.79 million square kilometers. That’s 130,000 square kilometers — about the size of the state of New York — smaller than the previous recorded minimum, reached on February 25, 2022.

Subpar sea ice

The amount of ocean around Antarctica covered in sea ice in 2023 (red) has stayed well below the average from 1981 to 2010 (black). Sea ice expanse hit a record low in late February — surpassing a record set just in 2022 (blue). The sea ice expanse for every year from 1981 to 2021 is shown in gray.

Even as the Southern Hemisphere shifted into winter, Antarctic sea ice remained at record low levels. On June 27, the ice was dotted across about 11.7 million square kilometers of ocean. That’s about 2.6 million square kilometers below the 1981–2010 average, and about 1.2 million square kilometers below the previous lowest extent on record for June 27, set in 2022.

Unlike Arctic ice, whose dwindling is known to be closely tied to global warming, it’s been harder to parse the reasons for changes in Antarctic sea ice extent. That difficulty has made it unclear whether changes are the result of natural variability or whether “something big has changed,” Serreze says.

As of June 28, the sea ice surrounding Antarctica, as measured by satellite, covered a smaller area of ocean than the average extent from 1981 to 2010 for this time of year. Yellow lines and dots represent missing satellite data.U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center

The last few years have given scientists pause (SN: 6/27/17). “We’re kind of dropping off an edge,” Serreze says. It’s not yet clear whether this year’s extent is part of a larger trend, he notes. But “the longer that persists, the more likely it is that something big is happening.”

The Arctic and the Antarctic regions are polar opposites, so to speak, in their geographic setting. Ice in the Arctic Ocean is confined to a relatively small body of water ringed by land. The Antarctic, by contrast, is a landmass surrounded by ocean, which means the sea ice around the continent is much more mobile than up north, with a larger seasonal range as it expands in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter and shrinks in summer. Climate simulations have, accordingly, consistently predicted that the Arctic would show bigger sea ice losses as the planet warms, at least at first, while Antarctica would be slower to respond.

As to why the Antarctic ice has tracked so low this year there are a few possible culprits. Regional climate patterns — particularly an air pressure pattern known as the Southern Annular Mode that shifts the direction of winds blowing around the continent — can pack or diffuse the sea ice cover around Antarctica. And other regional patterns, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, can affect both ocean and air circulation in the southern high latitudes.

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Right now, scientists are concerned most with what lies beneath the ice (SN: 12/13/21). “There’s growing evidence that there has been some kind of change in ocean circulation that is bringing more heat” to the region, which affects the ice cover, Serreze says. “There are a bunch of people looking into this; we’re really blitzing to get the data. We need to understand what the heck is going on in the ocean.” More

In the past few weeks, sea-surface temperatures in some parts of the North Atlantic Ocean have soared to record heights.

The anomalous warming is occurring in a large swath stretching almost one-third of the way across the Atlantic westward from the northwestern coast of Africa. Satellite data reveal that some surface waters in the area are almost 4 degrees Celsius (about 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal for this time of the year, says Brian McNoldy, a meteorologist at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.

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“There’s been record-breaking warmth since March, but even more so now,” he says.

On June 10, for instance, the average sea-surface temperature for the portion of the Atlantic that stretches from the equator to 60 degrees north — up to southern Norway, southern Greenland and the central portions of Canada’s Hudson Bay — was 22.7° C (nearly 73° F). That’s about 1 degree C higher than the average recorded from 1991 through 2020, McNoldy notes. The previous record for the same date, 22.1° C, occurred in 2010.

Hot Atlantic

Sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic in 2023 (red) have been breaking daily records since March. In this plot, the 1982–2022 daily mean temperatures have been subtracted from this year’s temperatures as well of those from 1982 to 2022 (gray).

This year’s warmer-than-normal waters might help strengthen storms that form in the eastern Atlantic and eventually spawn hurricanes, scientists say.

What’s causing the unusual warm-up isn’t clear. But here’s a rundown of several factors that might be at play.

A dearth of Sahara dust

Occasionally, vast swathes of desert dust from the Sahara waft across the ocean. They are carried by winds stirred up by a semipermanent high-pressure system dubbed the “Azores high” due to its proximity to those islands.

But lately, the Azores high has weakened and shifted southwest away from Africa. So those winds that typically pick up and transport Saharan dust westward over the North Atlantic are calmer and largely dust free, says Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

As a result, solar radiation that normally would be scattered back into space by the dust reaches the ocean surface, warming the dark waters (SN: 9/25/01).

If and when the trade winds strengthen, increased dust from Africa could help cool the area somewhat.

In a typical year, vast plumes of dust from the Sahara Desert (left in this satellite image of northwest Africa from 2020) block sunlight, shading and cooling the underlying ocean. This spring, a lack of dusty air has contributed to warming of the North Atlantic.NOAA

Decreased air pollution

In 2020, new emissions rules kicked in for long-haul container ships that spew sulfate-rich exhaust plumes. There’s been some speculation that less pollution could lead to more heating. With fewer plumes scattering sunlight back into space, more radiation reaches the sea surface.

But some studies suggest that the cooling effect of ship plumes may have been minor to begin with: Not only do the exhaust plumes have a short life span, the pollutants can cause natural clouds to evaporate more quickly and thus lead to warming, not cooling (SN: 2/1/21).

Global warming trends

This year marks the return of El Niño, a climate phenomenon whose hallmark is warmer-than-normal sea-surface temperatures along the equator west of South America. By winter, there’s a more than 4 in 5 chance that the El Niño will be either strong or moderate, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.

Each El Niño has its own personality (SN: 5/2/16). But in general, El Niño boosts average surface temperatures both on land and at sea worldwide, Mann says. Human-caused climate change has done the same, he notes.

But there’s still a lot of uncertainty about how current conditions may affect the coming forecast.

The unusually warm waters of the North Atlantic may tend to strengthen storm systems that later develop into tropical depressions and then hurricanes. But the El Niño that’s now developing in the equatorial Pacific may hamper their formation by strengthening winds in the upper atmosphere that can shear the tops off nascent hurricanes. How active this year’s hurricane season will be depends on which of these forces will prevail, scientists say (SN: 5/26/23).  More

Even as the thick clouds of smoke from wildfires raging in eastern Canada, which blanketed the U.S. East Coast in a dangerous orange haze, begin to dissipate, researchers are warning it’s a sign of the times.

Canada’s fire outlook will remain higher than normal for June. And on a larger scale, climate change is projected to make fire conditions more common across Canada, Russia and Alaska’s boreal forests.

The current fires were sparked by lightning in the Canadian province of Quebec; like much of Canada, parts of Quebec were abnormally dry this spring.

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Their smoky haze has dominated headlines, prompting warnings of dangerous air pollution levels. People were urged to stay indoors as much as possible, or wear masks, to avoid inhaling the fine particulate matter. The smoke, a toxic brew of irritant gases and tiny particles, can cause asthma, respiratory and cardiovascular problems, and can exacerbate existing conditions such as diabetes and chronic lung conditions (SN: 6/17/22; SN: 9/18/20).

Wildfire-driven air pollution is all too familiar to residents of the Pacific Northwest and the U.S. West, where most of the continent’s large wildfires occur, but it’s less common in the eastern part of North America. So June’s headline-grabbing haze might be a wake-up call to East Coast policy makers about the hazards of climate change, some researchers hope.

Smoke from wildfires in Eastern Canada shrouded New York City (shown) and other cities along the U.S. East Coast in a thick haze of fine particles on June 7, leading to a Code Purple day indicating the air was very unhealthy.ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

There’s plenty of historical precedent for that, says Nicholas Bond, state climatologist for the state of Washington, who is based in Seattle. “There were some periods when dust [from the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s] made it all the way to Washington, D.C., bringing attention to the disaster that was occurring in the Plains states,” he says.

Whether eastern Canada’s forests in particular will become more fire-prone due to climate change isn’t clear from recent simulations of future climate and fire behavior. The current fires are not necessarily a harbinger of things to come so much as a reminder of what’s already here: They’re burning in regions that are already considered at risk of fire.

Climate change is projected to boost fires across other vast swaths of boreal forest in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s already having an impact. “Wildfires in the boreal forests of Alaska burned more acres in the past 20 years” than in the previous 20 years, Bond says. How much of the forest is on fire can vary significantly from year to year; 2020 was below-average, with about 73,000 hectares burned. But the overall trend of burned area in boreal forests is expected to curve steeply upward by the middle of the century: The acreage of burned area in Alaska is projected to increase by 24 to 169 percent from 2020 to 2050.

Fire seasons in boreal forests are also expected to last longer and produce larger fires each year. Climate change may also increase the frequency of lightning strikes that spark fires such as those currently burning in Quebec — although that, too, is still uncertain.

Canada is currently fighting severe fires across the country, from coast to coast, stretching its resources thin — and the threat is expected to remain high in the coming weeks, the Canadian government reported on June 5.

That’s also true for the United States. “The Pacific Northwest is liable to be dealing with considerable smoke later this summer,” Bond says, based on a fire potential outlook report released June 1 by the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center. “For personal, selfish reasons I hope the winds do not bring the smoke our way.” More

It’s hard to know how busy this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be, thanks to a rarely observed combination of ocean and climate conditions.

The Atlantic Ocean is in an active storm era, a yearslong period of increasing storm activity. Plus sea surface temperatures there are much higher than usual this year, which can fuel storms, Matthew Rosencrans, the lead hurricane forecaster for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said May 25 at a news conference. But this year will also see the onset of an El Niño phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation ocean and climate pattern, which tends to suppress hurricane formation.

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That’s not a scenario that has occurred in historical records often, Rosencrans said. “It’s definitely kind of a rare setup for this year.”

He and his colleagues reported that there’s a 40 percent chance that Atlantic hurricane activity will be near normal this year. Near normal is actually unusually high for an El Niño year. But there’s also a 30 percent chance that activity will be above normal, and a 30 percent chance it’ll be below normal.

Overall, the agency is predicting 12 to 17 named storms, of which five to nine are predicted to become hurricanes, with sustained wind speeds of at least 119 kilometers per hour (74 miles per hour). Between one and four of those hurricanes could be category 3 or greater, with wind speeds of at least 178 kph (111 mph). The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1 and ends November 30.

There’s little consensus among other groups’ predictions, in part due to the uncertainty of what role El Niño will play. On April 13, Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, announced that it anticipated a below-average season, with just 13 named storms, including six hurricanes. On May 26, the U.K. Meteorological Office announced that it predicts an extremely busy hurricane season in the Atlantic, with 20 named storms, including 11 hurricanes, of which five could be category 3 or greater. The long-term average from 1991 to 2020 is 14 named storms.

So far, 23 different groups have submitted predictions for the 2023 Atlantic season to a platform hosted by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, which allows users to compare and contrast the various predictions. There’s a large spread among these predictions, ranging “from below average to well above average,” says Philip Klotzbach, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University who is responsible for the group’s seasonal Atlantic hurricane forecasts.

That spread is likely the result of two big sources of uncertainty, Klotzbach says: the strength of the El Niño (and when during the year it’s expected to develop), and whether the Atlantic’s surface water temperatures will stay above average.

Each group’s forecast is based on a compilation of many different computer simulations of ocean and atmospheric conditions that might develop during the hurricane season. How often those models agree leads to a probability estimate. NOAA’s models struggled to agree: “That’s why probabilities are not 60 to 70 percent,” Rosencrans said. “That’s to reflect there’s a lot of uncertainty this year in the outlook.”

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An emerging El Niño phase is signaled by abnormally warm waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which in turn is tied to shifts in wind strength and humidity around the globe. One of the ways that El Niño tinkers with climate is that it alters the strength of winds in the upper atmosphere over the northern Atlantic Ocean. Those stronger winds can shear off the tops of developing storms, hampering hurricane formation. Warmer ocean waters like those in the Atlantic right now, on the other hand, fuel hurricanes by adding energy to storm systems. How active a season it will be depends on which of those two forces will prevail.

The Met Office, for example, reported that its climate simulations suggest that the wind shear due to this year’s El Niño will be relatively weak, while surface ocean temperatures will remain well above average. Similarly anomalously warm waters in 2017 were found the be the primary cause behind that year’s glut of intense Atlantic hurricanes (SN: 9/28/18).

In the future, hurricane forecasts could become ever more uncertain. It’s unknown how climate change will affect large-scale ocean and climate patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in general (SN: 8/21/19). Computer simulations have suggested that as the atmosphere warms, these globe-scale “teleconnections” may become somewhat disconnected, which also makes them potentially harder to predict (SN: 2/13/23). Climate change is also expected to increase ocean temperatures.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Pacific Ocean’s hurricane season has already begun with a powerful storm, Super Typhoon Mawar, which battered Guam as a category 4 cyclone before roaring toward the Philippines on May 25, strengthening to category 5. More