Atlantic Hurricanes Preseason 2025

There has been no tropical cyclone of hurricane strength anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere so far in 2025. If we get to June 5th — which looks quite possible if not probable — then 2025 will have the latest date on record (since 1970) for the first NH hurricane, breaking the record of Ava, which reached hurricane strength in the Eastern Pacific on June 4th, 1973 (thanks to Ryan Maue for confirming — Give his excellent weather Substack a follow).

What does breaking a long-standing record of annual-to-date hurricane inactivity that has stood for 52 years tell us about the detection and attribution of changes in hurricane climatology?

Well . . . nothing.

Motivated by a recent commentary in Nature on Atlantic hurricanes that was all opinion and no data, in advance of the official 2025 North Atlantic hurricane season I thought I’d do a post on hurricanes that was all data and no opinion. The 2025 hurricane season begins on Sunday, June 1.

Enjoy!

Landfalling CONUS hurricanes (top) and major hurricanes (bottom), 1900-2024. Source: Updated from Klotzbach et al. 2018 with official NHC data.

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE, a measure of intensity) per NATL hurricane 1900 to 2024. Source: CSU.

Accumulated CYlcone Energy (ACE, a measure of intensity) per global hurricane, 1980 to 2024. Source: CSU.

For those wanting to show an increasing trend, NATL ACE per hurricane — use 1970 to 2024. Source: CSU.

How much damage would result if each hurricane season 1900 to 2024 occurred with 2024 societal levels of development and wealth? Normalized CONUS hurricane damage updated from Weinkle et al. 2018.

Twleve-month running average counts of global hurricanes (top) and major hurricanes (bottom), 1980 to March 10, 2025. Source: Ryan Maue.

Total annual global ACE (which integrates frequency and intensity) 1970 to March 10, 2025. Source: Ryan Maue.

Twelve month running counts of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes, 1970 to March 10, 2025. Source: Ryan Maue.

Donald Trump needs just 6 landfalling hurricanes over the next four hurricane seasons to reach 2nd place for total landfalls, passing GHWB. If Trump can match his first term, with 13, he will pass FDR into 1st place, He needs 11 to take the lead from Taft for 1st place in landfalls per year. Batten down!

Head here to read the latest (20 Nov 2024) NOAA GFDL assessment of what is known, unknown, and hypothesized about North Atlantic hurricanes and climate change.

The NOAA GFDL bottom line:

In summary, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability, although greenhouse gases are strongly linked to global warming.

Read more of our peer-reviewed research (and plenty more can be found here):

Weinkle, J., Landsea, C., Collins, D., Musulin, R., Crompton, R. P., Klotzbach, P. J., & Pielke Jr, R. (2018). Normalized hurricane damage in the continental United States 1900–2017. Nature Sustainability, 1(12), 808-813.
Klotzbach, P. J., Bowen, S. G., Pielke Jr, R., & Bell, M. (2018). Continental US hurricane landfall frequency and associated damage: Observations and future risks. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 99(7), 1359-1376.
Weinkle, J., Maue, R., & Pielke Jr, R. (2012). Historical global tropical cyclone landfalls. Journal of Climate, 25(13), 4729-4735.
Crompton, R. P., Pielke, R. A., & McAneney, K. J. (2011). Emergence timescales for detection of anthropogenic climate change in US tropical cyclone loss data. Environmental Research Letters, 6(1), 014003.

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