Hurricanes in a hot tub

Swimming in a warm ocean is nice until it isn’t as George Day explains in this report for the Cruising Compass:

All spring, we’ve been seeing news reports and press releases regarding the rapid warming of the earth’s oceans. This summer the water temperature at the beaches in south Florida has already risen to over 100 degrees, similar to the temperature you would set in your hot tub. NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concur that 2024 will play out as the hottest year on record and probably the hottest year in many millennia.

So, we thought we would scrounge around to see if we could find a graphic of what that sea temperature change looks like. The chart below was compiled by the EPA. I am not a climate scientist, but as a sailor who loves to go to sea and cruise in the tropics, this rise in sea water temperature is worth noting.

As we’ve been reporting, meteorologists can calculate the ferocity and speed of development of tropical storm systems from sea temperatures. The hotter the water, the faster storms develop and the more intense they become. So, this hurricane season, in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific, we’ll need to be extra vigilant of forming storms because they are going to come at us faster and will be more dangerous than ever. Fair winds.