Tropical Storm Arlene forms in the Gulf of Mexico

Tropical Storm Arlene formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, making it the first storm of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.

Arlene was located 260 miles west of Fort Myers, Fla., early Friday afternoon and headed south toward Cuba at five miles an hour, said the National Hurricane Center in an opinion.

The storm had winds of 40 mph, with higher gusts. Tropical disturbances with winds of 39 mph deserve a name. Once winds reach 74 mph, a storm becomes a hurricane, and at 111 mph, it becomes a major hurricane.

Arlene is technically the second tropical cyclone to reach tropical storm strength this year. The hurricane center announced in May that it had determined that a storm that formed off the northeastern United States in mid-January was a subtropical storm, making it the first Atlantic cyclone of 2023. However, the storm was not retroactively named, making Arlene the first named storm in the Atlantic this year.

The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and will run through November 30.

At the end of May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted there would be 12 to 17 named storms this year, a “near normal” number. There were 14 named storms last year, after two extremely busy Atlantic hurricane seasons in which forecasters ran out of names and had to resort to back-up lists. (A record 30 named storms occurred in 2020.)

However, NOAA didn’t express much certainty in its forecast this year, saying there was a 40 percent chance of a near-normal season, a 30 percent chance of an above-normal season and another 30 percent chance of a below-normal season. -normal season. normal season.

There was evidence of above-average ocean temperatures in the Atlantic for this season, which could fuel storms, and the potential for an above-normal West African monsoon. The monsoon season produces storm activity that can lead to some of the more powerful and longer-lasting Atlantic storms.

But forecasters also expect El Niño, the intermittent climate phenomenon that can have far-reaching effects on weather around the world, to develop this year. That could reduce the number of Atlantic hurricanes.

“It’s a pretty rare condition to have both going on at the same time,” Matthew Rosencrans, the lead hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said in May.

In the Atlantic Ocean, El Niño increases the amount of wind shear, or the change in wind speed and direction from the ocean or land surface to the atmosphere. Hurricanes need calm environments to form, and the instability caused by increased wind shear makes those conditions less likely. (El Niño has the opposite effect in the Pacific, reducing the amount of wind shear.) Even in average or below-average years, there’s a chance that a powerful storm will make landfall.

As global warming worsens, that probability increases. There is a solid consensus among scientists that hurricanes are becoming more powerful due to climate change. While there may be no more named storms in general, the likelihood of major hurricanes is increasing.

Climate change also affects the amount of rain storms can produce. In a warming world, the air can hold more moisture, meaning a named storm can hold and produce more rain, as Hurricane Harvey did in Texas in 2017, when some areas received more than 40 inches of rain in less than 48 hours.

Researchers have also found that storms have slowed down and spent longer over areas in recent decades.

When a storm slows down over water, the amount of moisture the storm can absorb increases. When the storm slows overland, the amount of rain that falls in a single location increases. For example, in 2019, Hurricane Dorian slowed to a crawl over the northwestern Bahamas, resulting in a total rainfall of nearly 23 inches in Hope Town during the storm.

Other possible effects of climate change include greater storm surges, rapid intensification, and a wider range of tropical systems.