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I'm writing a planet where the weather is always stormy. This planet has hurricanes and monsoons and huge thunderstorms and tornadoes on a weekly basis. The good news is that there are very few deserts on the planet but the bad news is that it is hard to settle down with the inclement weather all around you.

If a planet that was otherwise identical to Earth had big tropical storms on a weekly basis (I'm talking about several Category 5 hurricanes a year), how would it differ climatically from Earth? I imagine that coastlines would be inundated with saltwater and sea flora and sea fauna and that the strong winds and water would lead to increased erosion. On the plus side, renewable energy would be great if an advanced society ever was established.

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    $\begingroup$ The climate of a planet with very frequent hurricanes would be very frequent hurricanes. Methinks you mean something else besides 'climate'. $\endgroup$
    – Justin Thyme the Second
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 4:30
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    $\begingroup$ why do you think the number of hurricanes would make the number of deserts less? if anything it would mean more deserts, since you have a higher energy system with higher turnover. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 22:28
  • $\begingroup$ Do you mean what would be the geography of a planet with very frequent hurricanes? $\endgroup$
    – Nosajimiki
    Commented Dec 2, 2022 at 14:10
  • $\begingroup$ "On the plus side, renewable energy would be great" How would this follow? Violent storms are notoriously destructive on infrastructure. Windmills would be destroyed if they didn't fold in their vanes and stop operating for the duration. Hailstorms regularly take out solar arrays. Of course, it could be that better tech takes care of all that, but frequent battering will wear at things. $\endgroup$
    – MocBird
    Commented Dec 3, 2022 at 5:41

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What you need is heat differentials. Not necessarily heat itself. If you had a large localized flood basalt or rift eruption under a shallow(ish) ocean or sea where the lava would heat the water. You could have a region that could generate constant hurricanes for hundreds even thousands of years. Or even just a very large shallow ocean where it would have difficulty moving absorbed solar energy out of the area quickly enough. You'll get uplift circulation and eventually hurricanes. Of course enough of a Coriolis effect to stabilize the circulation is a necessary ingredient as well. Just not too much opposing wind turbulence to disrupt the formation of circulation.

Hurricanes are basically one of the side effects of the earth trying to reconcile its heat differential, it's trying to distribute the heat around the whole Earth and bring it to a uniform temperature.

Edit: I can't find it now, but I once read in an article, kind of a deep dive into what happened during and after the Chicxulub impact. One of which was that it took the crater floor thousands of years to cool. And during much of this time there was a "permanent" hurricane (hypercane?) at is center that would spin off smaller squalls and hurricanes until it did cool off.

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I think you generally need hot temperatures and wide expanses of ocean to generate storm activity.

Planetary rotation speed makes a difference too. A planet that rotates very slowly, for instance, would lack a significant Coriolis effect, meaning you probably wouldn't get rotating storm systems. (I'm not quite sure whether faster planetary rotation means you'd get more such storms, though.)

Edit: I'm not sure whether tornado rotation has anything to do with the Coriolis effect, but I suspect it's still strongly influenced by heat and moisture.

FYI, there is a somewhat terrifying hypothetical kind of storm called a "hypercane" that could conceivably form under extreme heat conditions.

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