If you were thinking about taking a sailing trip in the Pacific any time soon, you might want to hold off for a bit.
That’s because over the weekend, three separate Category 4 hurricanes (wind speed: 130-156 mph) formed over the waters of the Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean.
The three hurricanes — named Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena — are unlikely to hit the U.S. coast. They are, however, making weather history: never before in recorded history have three Category 4 hurricanes formed over the Pacific at the same time.
Satellite imagery showing Hurricanes Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena (Courtesy of NASA)
While the event is certainly unprecedented, it’s actually not all that surprising, according to Simon Donner, an associate professor of climatology at the University of British Columbia.
Donner explains that the only two ingredients you really need to create a powerful tropical storm are warm water and a calm upper atmosphere — ingredients that are in abundance right now because of the current El Niño weather system.
“Normally when you have an El Niño event, the Atlantic doesn’t experience many hurricanes at all, because El Niño shifts the air flow in the upper atmosphere, such that the storms in the Atlantic tend to get sheered off,”
Donner explained in a recent interview with Vancity Buzz. He continued,
“In the Pacific, the opposite happens. You have some sort of calm in the upper atmosphere, combined with extremely warm water temperatures, you get really strong storms. I’m not surprised to see this record of three Category 4 storms, when the water is as warm as it’s ever been, at least in recorded history. So it’s not that shocking.”
Donner also warned that rising ocean temperatures as a result of global warming will likely lead to more powerful hurricanes in the future:
“On average over time the oceans are definitely getting warmer… It doesn’t mean that we’ll have more hurricanes in the future, but it does mean that the ones that do develop will be stronger.”
Read more from The Weather Channel and Vancity Buzz.