The Atlantic Ocean finally saw its first two hurricanes in 2022 after months of almost total calm. Both Hurricanes Danielle (and Earl) developed Hurricane-force winds in the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend. They are now moving northward through the ocean where they are expected dissolve in cold water and make direct landfall.

Despite this recent flurry of activity, this year’s Atlantic hurricane season is still one of the quietest on record — and it seems likely to stay that way. This summer, the United States has been hit with historic floods, heat waves and wildfires. However, no major hurricanes have struck the United States so far. Meteorologists are monitoring a few additional Storm systems that could develop in the coming weeks but none are expected to pose an imminent threat for residents of the Caribbean and American mainland.

Danielle, Earl and only three other Tropical Storms formed in the Atlantic this June. Alex, the only one that caused noticeable land effects, led to flash flooding in Miami, Florida, on June 24th. The overall level of tropical storm activity is only around 10% this year. If the trend continues, 2022 will be the fourth quietest in the past century. With the traditional peak of hurricane season coming up on September 10, it’s looking more and more probable that the year will finish well below average.

“It’s super weird,” said Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist at Colorado State University, one of the leading hurricane forecasting institutions. “If you just showed me, ‘here’s what the winds look like,’ I would have said we should have had a couple of hurricanes, probably at least one major hurricane — conditions are fairly conducive, and yet, nothing is going.”

Many meteorologists are surprised at the absence of tropical storms, especially since every major hurricane model for this year predicted a strong season. Experts are still trying to figure out what’s causing the reprieve. If anything, the symptoms still point toward a busier season: The world is experiencing a La Niña climate pattern, wherein cold Pacific Ocean temperatures reduce wind shear in the Atlantic, which should make it easier for storms to grow. The Atlantic surface has been hot most of the year with temperatures high enough to support storm development. It’s just that very few storms have emerged.

Klotzbach suggested that the most likely explanation for this dry spell was a large amount of dry air which has hung to Africa’s west for most of the past month. This has reduced overall moisture levels above the oceans. He suggested that the dry spell could have been caused earlier this summer by the European heat wave. The high-pressure system which burned Europe made the tropics colder, and the temperature differential between regions allowed dry air flow into the tropicals. This prevented major storms from forming.

In the future, this reprieve could continue. Meteorologists project that the current multi-year La Niña may end as soon as this winter, shifting back toward an El Niño pattern that will kick up winds in the Atlantic and suppress many storms. Climate change could actually make things quieter. Recent research suggests that a warmer world may decrease the temperature differential between the oceans and the atmosphere, which would reduce hot air movements that can lead to tropical storms.

Climate change can reduce storm activity and result in quieter hurricane seasons. However, it also fuels storms that do form because the ocean temperatures are increasing. Increasingly, once a cyclone hits the extra-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, it experiences what’s known as “rapid intensification” — ballooning in size, picking up speed, and reaching maximum strength before it hits land. This process often happens too fast for residents in these storms’ paths to prepare.

“By this time of year, the temperatures are warm enough for anything to form. And the warmer and warmer it gets, the more explosive something can be,” said Brian McNoldy, a research associate at the University of Miami who studies hurricanes. “Anytime we have a rapidly intensifying storm on its way to making landfall, we start to realize that evacuations are just impractical. It’s really impossible to get large numbers of people out of harm’s way when you have these short-fuse storms.” 

We’ve seen several examples of this phenomenon in recent years, including 2021’s Hurricane Ida, which grew from a messy tropical formation to a high Category 4 hurricane in the span of about three days. Computer models were adept at predicting the storm’s path, but the cyclone grew so fast as to make it impossible to evacuate coastal Louisiana cities like New Orleans and Baton Rouge in a timely manner. The consequences were disastrous: Tens of thousand New Orleans were without power for days. Residents of nearby River Parishes were forced to wait out floods when the levees collapsed.

These dynamics remain constant whether the overall hurricane season is active or relatively quiet, which is why McNoldy likes to say that “all it takes is one.”

“We might have even not as many cyclones, but of the ones that form could become even stronger than they would have before,” he told Grist.

Klotzbach claimed that the relationship between tropical storms and climate change is still unclear. There are only about 100 years worth of data on hurricanes. It makes it difficult for us to see long-term trends. However, the lessons of the past years are evident. The threat of climate-enhanced hurricanes is not that they’re guaranteed to happen every summer, like wildfires, but that the worst of them can happen at any moment, with little notice.

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