Hurricane

• Main Authors: Todd B. Kimberlain, James, B. Elsner
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1996
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.485.2043; http://myweb.fsu.edu/jelsner/PDF/Research/KimberlainElsner1998.pdf

Hurricane activity over the North Atlantic basin during 1995 and 1996 is compared to the combined hurricane activity over the previous four years (1991–94). The earlier period produced a total of 15 hurricanes compared to a total of 20 hurricanes over the latter period. Despite this similarity in numbers, the hurricanes of 1995 and 1996 were generally of the tropical-only variety, which marks a substantial departure from activity during the early 1990s. The return of tropical-only hurricanes to the Atlantic basin is likely the result of several global and local factors, including cool SST conditions in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific and warm SSTs in the tropical Atlantic. The hurricane activity of 1995 and 1996 is more reminiscent of activity of some seasons during the early and mid-1950s. 1. Two record hurricane seasons Both the 1995 and 1996 Atlantic hurricane seasons had many more hurricanes than average, and several long-standing records were broken during these two sea-sons. Overall, the combined 1995–96 seasons produced a record 20 hurricanes. A hurricane is defined as a trop-