ENSO and North Atlantic Hurricanes

Atlantic Hurricane Tracks

Hurricane tracks can also be influenced by ENSO. Figure 6 shows the tracks of hurricanes in El Niño and La Niña years. Figure 7 show the density of tracks in for the same years. The Atlantic was divided in small boxes of latitude and longitude and we counted how many times the hurricane tracks fell in each box. The larger number of hits is shown in Figure 7 by colors in different shades of red and the smaller number of hits (minimum one hit) is shown in different blue shades. By examiniming both Figures, one notices  the larger number of Hurricanes in La Niña years, also  more hurricanes  cross the Caribbean and more hurricanes make landfall in the U.S. in La Niña than in El Niño years (Gray, 1984).

Figure 6: Tracks of Atlantic Hurricanes August to October, 1950-2001 for El Niño years (red) and La Niña years (blue).