Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, explained why the weekend's storm was unusual and the impact it’s having on coastal Alaskans.
Merbok also hit during the fall subsistence harvest season, when the region’s Indigenous communities are stocking up food for the winter. Rick Thoman, aWhat stands out the most about this storm?It, far east of Japan, where historically few typhoons form. The water there is typically too cold to support a typhoon, but right now, we have extremely warm water in the north-central Pacific. Merbok traveled right over waters that are the warmest on record going back about 100 years.
Sea surface temperatures show unusually warm water over the eastern Pacific Ocean, where Typhoon Merbok passed through. The Western Bering Sea, closer to Russia, has been running above normal sea surface temperature since last winter. The Eastern Bering Sea – the Alaska part – has been normal to slightly cooler than normal since spring. That temperature difference in the Bering Sea helped to feed the storm and was probably part of the reason the storm intensified to the level it did.
When Merbok moved in to the Bering Sea, it wound up being by far the strongest storm this early in the autumn. We’ve had stronger storms, but they typically occur in October and November.There’s a strong likelihood that Merbok was able to form where it did because of the
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