Written by Staff Writer at CNN
Warmer-than-normal waters in the Atlantic may add to the odds of higher-than-normal hurricane activity during the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Global Outlook for Climate Models said.
The report, released in Geneva on Thursday, predicts that season activity will peak in the second half of the season, which runs from June 1 to November 30 each year.
During the first half of the hurricane season, the report predicts activity will hit its lowest levels since the 1960s.
But after a lull in activity in the third and fourth weeks of the season, activity will increase ahead of the usual peak around the end of August to the middle of September.
During the 10-year average period beginning in 2006, there have been 11 tropical storms and five hurricanes, of which three have been major hurricanes.
Will a large El Nino occur?
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“The season outlook includes hurricane activity around the periphery of the normal La Nina and El Nino trends, which have been the dominant drivers of the North Atlantic hurricane season since the 1970s,” said Dejan Radovanovic, lead meteorologist at the WMO, in a statement.
The report attributed the forecast to the increased use of advanced climate models, which simulate the position, speed and direction of a storm, more accurately than ever before.
Though the report will be used to shape the agency’s planning processes, the report’s predictions come amid warnings that global warming is likely to have a negative impact on the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.
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President Donald Trump has denied that climate change is caused by humans and this year’s G7 meeting did not include a commitment by the leading industrial countries to fight climate change.
The WMO’s report is based on two large-scale models, the Global Atmospheric Simulator and the Global Cyclonic Model, which simulate atmospheric and oceanic processes across the globe.
The models look at the impacts of six categories of scenarios on the flow of tropical storms and hurricanes across the world.