Reply to Comment on “How nature foiled the 2006 hurricane forecasts”

The two main objections of Evan [this issue] to our paper are that (1) the 2006 sea surface temperature (SST) in the Atlantic Ocean was actually above normal compared with the long-term climatology, and (2) the dust radiative forcing in 2006 was not substantially greater than in 2005 and could not have caused the large change in SST.

First, we recognize that 2006 was a climatologically warm year. However, the main focus of our study was on the abrupt cooling of the Atlantic SST from 2005 to 2006, not on the long-term variation. Hence this point is not germane to our study Second, we suggested that Saharan dust may have been important in triggering a series of rapid feedback processes in the ocean-atmosphere system in the Atlantic in 2006 resulting in conditions that are unfavorable for hurricane formation.Therefore, the real question is, how much initial dust radiative forcing is sufficient to trigger the feedback processes? This is not a simple question to answer, because it depends on the timing of the aerosol forcing and the preexisting state of the large-scale coupled atmosphere-landocean system.