Hurricane Beryl: How Sea Surface Temperatures Impact The Strength Of Storms

5 months ago

Meteorologist Dr. Marshall Shepherd joined Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss Hurricane Beryl.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00And do you think we're going to see rapidly intensifying storms more this season?

00:07You know, the trends have certainly been in that favor over the last couple of years going

00:13back even to 2020.

00:14I mean, from 2020 onward, we've seen a lot of rapidly intensifying storms, and that's

00:21because, Brittany, that pool of water out there is quite warm.

00:25I mean, the warm water, what we call ocean heat content, the hurricanes drop on that.

00:32And if they have this ample warm water and they start to develop, and there's a really

00:36favorable upper-level environment with not a lot of wind shear tearing that vertically

00:40erect storm apart, that storm can just, poof, blow.

00:44And it gets stronger, the pressure in the center of the storm goes down, so when we

00:48see decreasing pressure in a hurricane, that means it's getting stronger, the winds respond

00:52by getting faster.

00:53So it's all very much connected, so that's why we very much keep an eye on the sea surface

00:58temperatures and the upper-level conditions as well.

01:01You mentioned when you were writing for Forbes about Hurricane Beryl that there is another

01:05storm that you're keeping your eye out, you're going to write about it later, but is there

01:08anything you can tell us about that now?

01:11You know, I've looked at the latest model projections, they're starting to back off

01:15of that one a little bit.

01:16And part of the reason actually may be because of Beryl.

01:19As Hurricane Beryl churns along, it churns up colder water behind it, in the ocean,

01:26and that could be part of the reasons why the models are starting to sort of back off

01:30on that storm.

01:31Now, it still may have, briefly, the latest I saw from the models this morning on July

01:351st, is it's still resolving some type of system, but whether it actually gets to anything

01:40beyond a tropical storm or even to a tropical storm now remains to be seen, because it may

01:45be feeling some of the effect.

01:47Remember, I said that warm ocean water is important, but Beryl is so strong, it's churning

01:51up deep, colder water, so that next system would have to come behind it.

01:56It may be feeling the effects of some of that, what we call upwelling, that churning up of

02:01colder water.

02:02And so, I think it remains to be seen.

02:03But the key message here, Brittany, and you're spot on with bringing this up, we're not going

02:08to be able to let our guard down this hurricane season.

02:11It's going to be an extremely busy hurricane season.

02:13I'll give you a little nugget for the listeners and viewers.

02:16You may be familiar with the fact that in recent years, which is astounding in itself,

02:21hurricane seasons have been so active that we've run out of names on the name list.

02:26When that happened in the past, we had to use the Greek alphabet, so once we ran out

02:30of the names, we'd start with Hurricane Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on.

02:34This year, there's been a change.

02:36There actually is now a supplemental name list that would be used.

02:41Only reason I'm bringing that up is I believe that we could have an active enough season

02:45that we may run out of names this year.

Hurricane Beryl: How Sea Surface Temperatures Impact The Strength Of Storms

Category

Transcript

Recommended