I wonder if the current high SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures off the west coast of Africa will spark off more Cape Verde tropical cyclones than occurred last year? For the record 2023, was a little above average using the accumulated ACEACE Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a metric used by various agencies to express the energy released by a tropical cyclone during its lifetime. It is calculated by summing the square of a tropical cyclone's maximum sustained winds, measured every six hours. The resulting total can be divided by 10,000 to make it more manageable, or added to other totals in order to work out a total for a particular group of storms. index for the year in the North Atlantic. There were a handful of storms that originated from the around the Cape Verde Islands although I am unaware of any correlation between the number of cyclones and SST. As you can see that at the moment the SST is around +3°C and two degree warmer that at the same time last year. SST are fickle, and can change quite quickly, especially close to the coast, so these higher than average SST may well not persist into June.
