Hurricane intensity and storm-cooled sea

Scientists at NOAA's Hurricane Research Division recently analyzed the inner-core upper-ocean environment for 23 Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean hurricanes between 1975 and 2002. Unlike earlier studies that highlighted upper-ocean cooling patterns days after a storm's passage, the primary goal of this research was to accurately document storm-induced SST changes directly under the storm within the high-wind hurricane environment. Results from this study show that on average, the magnitude of SST cooling beneath the storm ranges between 0[degrees] and 2[degrees]C, which is considerably less than the 4[degrees]-5[degrees]C cooling typically observed in the poststorm "cold wake" …