Bizarre & Disturbing. Subtropical Storm Alex Forms in Atlantic, Hurricane Pali in Pacific in Jan
Hurricane Pali is heading where no hurricane has gone before, within 5 degrees of the equator in the north central Pacific. Forecasters have been stunned by Pali. Tropical storms generally don’t form near the equator because they can’t develop enough spin there but a phenomenal atmospheric wave moved eastward along the equator all the way from the Indian ocean to the eastern Pacific over the last month. That massive wave of thunderstorms on both sides of the equator built a strong surge of westerly winds on the equator as it moved east.
When those west winds reached the central Pacific where the Northeasterly trade reach deep into the tropics, the thunderstorms developed spin and tropical storm Pali formed “impossibly” close to the equator. Pali is the earliest tropical storm ever in the central and east north Pacific. Only one other hurricane has ever formed in January in that region. Moreover, Pali has been closer to the equator than any storm in the region. The super El Nino and the very warm equatorial water temperatures played a role, but Pali’s behavior is still hard to explain.
To make the weather even weirder, a subtropical storm, Alex, just formed in the Atlantic...in January. Water temperatures would normally be too low to support development of a tropical storm except for the very cold temperatures aloft. Very cold temperatures persist into the stratosphere above Alex. It’s weird, really weird, how the lower atmosphere (troposphere) is so thick above Alex and how the lower stratosphere is so cold.
One of the weird effects of increasing greenhouse gases is the cooling of the lower stratosphere. MIT professor Kerry Emanuel found that the cooling of the transition layer between the troposphere and stratosphere has had a larger impact on increasing the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes than warming sea surface temperatures. Perhaps that has something to do with the bizarre formation of subtropical storm Alex in January.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/13/1469634/-Bizarre-Disturbing-Subtropical-Storm-Alex-Forms-in-Atlantic-Hurricane-Pali-in-Pacific-in-January
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