(Phys.org) —Scientists have struggled to pinpoint the factors that control hurricane activity across years in the Northeast tropical Pacific. Previous studies focused mainly on the temperature at the water's surface as the key influence on developing hurricanes. The warmer the surface temperature, the more likely hurricanes intensified given the right atmospheric conditions. The Northeast Pacific, however, has some of the coldest water surface temperatures in the tropics yet places second around the world in the number of serious storms per year. Clearly, something else is at work. Now researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered that the year-to-year variability in the depth of warm ocean water plays an important role in brewing up a storm's intensity.
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