Possible Links Between Warming and Tornadoes are Still Murky

Tornadoes are very difficult to predict. They require a complex set of conditions in order to form. Scientists still don't fully understand it, and forecasting is rarely accurate more than a week or two in advance.

That makes it harder to parse out the potential influence of global warming on tornado season. But scientists have begun to uncover some intriguing links between tornado outbreaks in the United States and large-scale climate patterns in other parts of the world. Shifting ocean temperatures, thousands of miles away, may have an influence on twisters in some of the nations most tornado-prone states.

The tornado effect appears to be strong in April, but is much less certain in May. As a result, researchers suggest that tornado forecasting may be easier during some parts of the spring tornado season than others. Multiple studies have already drawn connections between sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and the Gulf and U.S. tornado activity. But the research does underscore the complexity of tornado forecasting from one year to the next, and the even greater complexity of accounting for the influence of climate change in the long term.