The image above is a thermal map of the world’s oceans as of 8/5/2022. If there’s one thing that should be apparent, it’s that there’s a lot of heat currently in the world’s oceans, particularly in the tropics, and eventually much of that energy will get released in the form of storms. And while warm oceans in the summer are not atypical of most summers, less common are some of the sustained temperatures in places that are not used to experiencing some of those temperatures, as well as the amplitude and the length of some of the heatwaves for those that are. Last summer was already the hottest summer on record for the US, and I’ll wager a guess that 2022 is going to blow that out of the water. Here is the temperature scale for the above image:
That red vertical line represents the approximate minimum temperature required to form a cyclone- which is a fancy term for both hurricanes (cyclones which occur in the Western Hemisphere) and typhoons (cyclones which occur in the Eastern Hemisphere).
As you can see, there’s a lot of orange and amber in that image above (and even a couple of spots that are red). The Caribbean, which doesn’t even have the warmest water, nevertheless looks like a hot tub right now. Any tropical activity which ends up there is going to intensify, quickly.
