Do Big Hurricanes change the eco-structure of Oceans noticeably

Factual Questions
1

Watching Hurricane Igor for the last few days, I am marveling at the size of it.

The ocean must be really churning underneath it and I would think the surface temperature of the water should be different as deeper water gets inner mixed with the surface water.

And if there is a quick change in surface temperature, would it change the eco-balance of plankton and algae (or whatever). Or is the water temperature change negligible?

What about the large sealife? Do dolphins, whales sense the storms and stay away? is there a void of large mammals and large fish in the hurricane path after the hurricane has passed?

2

No, the waves of a hurricane only affect the surface. I don’t know the exact depth, but 30 feet down or so you don’t notice a thing.

3

According to Jeff Masters, it’s more like 600 feet +.

From here.

4

This upwelling can pull up sufficiently cooler deeper water to (slightly) weaken slow-moving/stationary storms, or at least slow their intensification. This was briefly a concern a few days ago when Igor was moving very slowly wnw-ward as it rounded the subtropical ridge.

5

You can see this here, from Hurricane Edouard in 1996 (figure 1), which shows sea-surface temps (SST’s) 2-4 degrees (C) colder along the track:

Satellite Imagery of Sea Surface Temperature Cooling in the Wake of Hurricane Edouard (1996) in: Monthly Weather Review Volume 125 Issue 10 (1997) (warning PDF)

Edit: This shows the upwelling effect. The storm was moving fast enough that it wasn’t affected by this upwelling.

6

I’ve experienced extremely severe weather in the North Atlantic in a submarine years ago, as in sea state 8 or 9. I don’t recall if it was an actual hurricane, or just the very rough “perfect storm”-type weather you sometimes get way out at sea.

Anyway, we were supposed to pick up our communications broadcast during the storm, so we were proceeding up to periscope depth. We knew there was a storm going on, because the sonar operators could hear it raging above us.

At about 300 feet, the boat started rolling noticeably. At 250 feet, we were already experiencing 15-degree rolls, and depth control was getting difficult to maintain. Not too long after that, the captain decided that the broadcast could wait. :wink: