2 weeks ago
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Three tropical cyclones are churning in the South Pacific at the same time, satellite images show, in a rare occurrence for the region.
Tropical cyclones Rae, Seru and Alfred formed over five days and are still spinning in a stretch off the eastern coast of Australia and around 8,000 kilometers into the Pacific, where the cyclone season is reaching its peak.
“Certainly it is a very busy period for the South Pacific and three tropical cyclones is a lot to happen at once,” Brian Tang, an atmospheric science professor at University at Albany, told the Associate Press, adding it was not unprecedented.
The last time three such storms occurred in the South Pacific was January 2021 when Lucas, Ana and Bina were churning simultaneously, Tang said.
People in the northern Australian state Queensland have been anxiously watching Alfred’s path after it formed Monday and intensified to a category three storm overnight, producing wind gusts of 185km/h in the Coral Sea. It’s unclear whether it will veer towards the coast and make landfall.
Rae formed on Friday north of Fiji and brought whipping winds and heavy rain that damaged fruit trees, according to local reports. Seru became a cyclone on Tuesday and is expected to track near the island nation of Vanuatu but remain offshore.
The climate crisis has added extra heat to the world’s oceans, which acts as fuel for tropical storms. The year 2024 saw the hottest ocean temperatures on record.
While global warming isn’t increasing the number of storms overall, higher-category storms are becoming more frequent and more powerful. Some studies show they are also moving more slowly on land, making them more destructive.
Tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are all essentially the same weather event, but their names depend on where in the world’s oceans they formed. Hurricanes, for example, form in the North Atlantic, while the term tropical cyclones are used for those in the south-western Pacific.
Seeing three in a row is particularly unusual this season as the planet is in a La Niña phase, which cools ocean temperatures, depriving tropical storms of fuel. Scientists have forecast fewer than average tropical cyclones this year in the region.
Gabriel Vecchi, a climate scientist at Princeton University, noted evidence of what’s called a Madden–Julian Oscillation — a fluctuation in the atmosphere that results in a blob of rising air and rainfall that circles the globe and lasts for 30 days or longer. He said it seems to be tracking over the south-west Pacific in a way that could enhance cyclone activity.
“The atmosphere is chaotic. There’s a lot of natural fluctuation in it … we need to be open to the possibility that factors that are beyond our ability to predict might have led to these three cyclones at the same time,” said Vecchi.
