In October 2025, Sylvia Knight, Head of Education at the RMetS, delivered a talk outlining the causes and impacts of ENSO to A level geography students for the Geographical Association in Northern Ireland.
With thanks to Niall Majury, the talk was recorded and can be viewed here.
In this Decision Making Exercise (DME), students consolidate learning about Tropical Cyclones and explore the Saffir-Simpson scale for categorising hurricanes and decide whether, or not, to change it in response to global climate change.
It has been assumed that students have already learned about the basics of Tropical Cyclones, where they occur, the weather associated with them and the risks they pose. These are covered in some of the resources available through the link at the bottom of the page.
Evidence sheets – these could be printed and distributed around the classroom in a marketplace type activity, or shared digitally.
Weather headlines are popping into the news at the moment, with some taglines wrongly indicating Atlantic hurricanes are on the way to the UK! Let’s clear this up!
We will not experience a hurricane any time soon in the UK. Hurricanes transition to extratropical cyclones by the time they hit the UK, and instead ‘arrive’ in the UK in a very similar form to the usual Low pressure systems the UK gets, perhaps bringing a little warmer (Tropical maritime air) and more moisture than normal. The storm making the headlines is forecast to move over the UK late Friday 3rd and into Saturday 4th October 2025 and is expected to be very strong. Due to the strength it has now been named Storm Amy to make people aware of the risks it poses and the actions needed to stay safe.
Currently there are two Tropical cyclones located off the east coast of the United States of America (Figure 1). In the North Atlantic Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes, a term also used for tropical cyclones in the north-eastern and central Pacific. These hurricanes are large low-pressure systems that are transporting large amounts of heat and moisture poleward from more Tropical regions, contributing to the atmosphere’s natural processes to balance out the energy imbalance between the Equator and the Poles.
Hurricane Imelda and Humberto are both (as of 3pm 1st September 2025) categorised as Category 1 hurricanes on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Imelda is currently positioned where conditions are still favourable for the hurricane to strengthen to become Category 2 hurricane later today.
Humberto is in a slightly later stage of its lifetime, having previously peaked at the very top of the Saffir-Simpson scale, Category 5, earlier in the week when sustained winds reached 160mph winds (Figure 2). This classified Humberto as a major hurricane.
Now Humberto is moving into unfavourable environments for hurricane development and is expected to weaken. It will then go through a process called extra-tropical transition by the end of the day and it is this process which ensures a hurricane will not be hitting UK shores. It essentially transitions the hurricane to what we know as a ‘normal’ area of low pressure.
Having two hurricanes in the North Atlantic at the same time is not unusual, and the occurrence of major hurricanes is become less unusual. One known impact of climate change is having a higher proportion of intense tropical cyclones or major hurricanes. This does not mean we are having more hurricanes per year overall, it is the intensity in windspeeds and precipitation that is increasing.
However, the proximity of the two hurricanes is unusual. These two cyclones rank 10th in the list of closest named storms since 1966, with 582 miles between the hurricanes. When cyclones get close enough, less than 900km (~560miles), their wind fields can interact with one another in a process called the Fujiwhara effect. The Fujiwhara effect can cause cyclones to ‘dance’ or rotate around one another and sometimes even merge. Imelda and Humberto are not projected to merge but are interacting.
We know from our understanding of the Global Atmospheric Circulation that there are westerly winds in the mid-latitudes and because of this the now hurricanes, but future ex-hurricanes, will be carried across the Atlantic towards the UK (Figure 3).
Humberto, once downgraded to an extratropical cyclone is expected to make its way over the Atlantic in very favourable locations for deepening the Low pressure and therefore strengthening the storm.
When on the western side of the Atlantic, ex-Tropical Humberto is expected to be in a right jet entrance (where the jet stream is speeding up or accelerating), and as it approaches the UK it is expected to be in the left exit region of the jet, both places that encourage rising motion, a reduction of air mass in the centre of the system and therefore cyclogenesis or deepening of a storm.
We can see by Friday evening (Figure 4) and into the early hours of the morning that there are very tightly packed isobars around the system, indicating the Low pressure, but also the extremely high winds that this storm will bring to the UK. Even after the centre of Storm Amy has moved NE of the UK on Saturday (Figure 5), the isobars are forecasted to stay tightly packed together and the strong winds will persist for longer.
Due to the forecasted intensity of this storm, the Met Office has named it Storm Amy, using the storm names that were announced earlier in the year. This will be the first named storm of the year.
If you would like to explore hurricanes like Humberto and Imelda and Low pressures like Storm Amy during the events or retrospectively earth.nullschool is a great tool to use.
This interactive globe shows numerous atmospheric variables through many different layers in the atmosphere and also extends to ocean waves and currents.
The surface winds show the Low pressure systems well, with the rapid cyclonic winds (anticlockwise winds in the Northern Hemisphere) standing out clearly. In order to do this go to the website and:
Back in 2021 we released the Weather and Climate Teachers’ guide, accompanied by resources for the classroom and teacher CPD.
We are now happy to announce that the CPD ‘More For Teachers’ documents are now available as a series of short films on our YouTube channel.
The videos, like the guide, are aimed at secondary geography teachers to support the delivery of weather and climate lessons to 11–14+ year old students. They are not linked to any specific curriculum and should support teaching across all of the UK.
See the first video here:
Students complete a graphic organiser using videos and information sheets. This could be done as a marketplace activity, where students rotate around stations in the room gathering information.
Adaptation/ mitigation worksheet
Adaptation and Mitigation – information sheets for the activity
Example of climate change adaptation and mitigation – Sheffield and flooding along the River Don
Adaptation Top Trumps – introduction
Adaptation Top Trumps – file for printing
External link: strategies to adapt to inland flooding in Sheffield from Earth Learning Ideas
The Pakistan floods of 2022 – causes -ppt
The physical causes of the Monsoon worksheet
Pakistan Floods are a climate catastrophe video tasks worksheet
The Pakistan floods of 2022 – impacts – ppt
Flooding in Sheffield, causes and attribution to climate change
Cambridge temperature data worksheet
2022 heatwave – consequences for people and place worksheet
Heat waves and climate change worksheet
Knowledge Organiser: 2022 Heatwave in Cambridge Case Study
In this lesson we deal with what hazardous weather is and why our weather is becoming more hazardous.
1.How do we define ‘extreme weather’ and why can it be difficult?
2.What events qualify as “extreme weather”?
3.What has happened to the frequency of extreme weather events globally?
4.What has happened to the distribution of extreme weather events?