The 2015 Hurricane Season in the North Atlantic: An Analysis of Environmental Conditions

• Main Authors: Collins, Jennifer, Roache, David R.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Digital Commons @ University of South Florida 2019
• Subjects: Hurricanes; North Atlantic; 2015 season; Earth Sciences
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/geo_facpub/1410; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02402-4_6

The 2015 North Atlantic hurricane season was particularly inactive, this inactivity occurring in the presence of a near-record El Niño, the strongest since 1997. When analyzing large-scale environmental conditions utilizing NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 2, we show that the Caribbean was particularly inactive under very strong wind shear and positive Omega conditions. While conditions generally were not conducive in the North Atlantic, there were conducive conditions present at specific times and specific locations, and these tended to be when and where we saw tropical cyclone activity. Vorticity in particular showed large intraseasonal variability with the location of the positive vorticity relating to storms such as Ana in May, Claudette in July, multiple storms in August and September, and Joaquin in October. We assess how the active and inactive periods observed during the 2015 hurricane season were related to this month to month atmospheric variability.