Hurricane Intensity Linked to Climate Change

[buzzsaw_23]

Hurricane intensity linked to climate change
September 16, 2005 - 9:06AM

The number of high-strength cyclones, like Hurricane Katrina, has nearly doubled in 35 years in all five of Earth's ocean basins, which scientists said today could be linked to global climate change.

"Global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes," said the researchers from the University of Georgia and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado.

<snip>

They noted a strong uptick in the number and proportion of storms in the top two Saffir-Simpson levels, categories four and five, has been constant from 1970 to 2004, especially in the Indian and the North and South-west Pacific Ocean basins. The rise has been less in the North Atlantic.


Around the world, the number of tropical hurricane days rose regularly from 1970 to 1995, when it levelled off at 870 hurricane days, then dropped by 25 per cent until 2003, to 600 days, the scientists said.

http://smh.com.au/news/world/hurricane-intensity-linked-to-climate-change/2005/09/16/1126750104915.html

[Miss Chybil]

1. Ah, humbug! This is just scientific mumbo-jumbo.

:sarcasm:

[Kagemusha]

2. Ughhhhhhhhh!!! 35 years ago a cycle of high activity was ending!

And that's not secret knowledge!! Ugh ugh ugh ugh...

[Igel]

3. That's an absurdly misleading title.

Did the editor even read the article the article refers to?

[applegrove]

4. Yup. But only the few people who make up the Bush Brain Trust

are allowed to know the good information. Shhhhhhhhhh.

[Old Mouse]

5. Hokkaido, Japan

had its first typhoon in history last year, and its second this year.

After years of disease on the trees of the pacific northwest, next summer North California and Oregon will be a tinderbox. Southern California has yet to adjust to flood level annual rains. Ice storms have shut down portions of northeast several times in the past decade, but its that NEW weather phenomena, the windstorms that shut down Tokyo and Paris last year, that I think we have to worry about.

[kestrel91316]

6. A typhoon in Hokkaido is like a hurricane in Seattle.

[applegrove]

8. They usually don't have hurricanes in South America either - because

of the way the earth spins - they go north. But lately..

[Bigmack]

7. Insurance companies....

..believe it's climate change. How do I know? 'Cause they're getting the hell out of the insurance business in hurricane/disaster prone areas. Or, more precisely, getting out of the RISK business.

Florida has some kind of "pool" insurance, and I'm sure other states do, too.

Insurance companies have actuaries who keep track of this stuff, and the actuaries must be shitting Tiffany cufflinks.

[Psephos]

10. There's a different reason

They're getting out because of the relentless development of coastal areas prone to hurricane damage. More people than ever (and their expensive houses and belongings) are now living where they shouldn't. The financial exposure is mammoth.

It's well-known among weather scientists that hurricane intensity follows a roughly four-decade cycle (20 years of rising intensity and frequency, followed by 20 years of falling intensity and frequency). This cycle appears dependent upon a multi-decadal temperature oscillation in the Atlantic that also is linked to the faster-cycle El Ninos.

Linkage between global sea-surface temperatures and atmospheric heat content is fantastically complex, and anyone who thinks there is a simple cause-and-effect linkage between global warming and hurricane intensity is laughably unaware of the science.

BTW, this isn't directed at you, Bigmack. :-)

Peace.

[quiet_please]

9. There are studies

that show both ways. I have yet to see conclusive proof that any weather related incidents are related to global warming.

[struggle4progress]

11. Severe hurricanes increasing, study finds (WP)

By Juliet Eilperin
Updated: 5:21 a.m. ET Sept. 16, 2005

WASHINGTON - A new study concludes that warming sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes, adding fuel to an international debate over whether global warming contributed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

The study, published today in the journal Science, is the second in six weeks to draw this conclusion, but other climatologists dispute the findings and argue that a recent spate of severe storms reflects nothing more than normal weather variability.

According to data gathered by researchers at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes, including weaker ones, has dropped since the 1990s. Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall.

Using satellite data, the four researchers found that the average number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes -- those with winds of 131 mph or higher -- rose from 10 a year in the 1970s to 18 a year since 1990. Average tropical sea surface temperatures have increased as much as 1 degree Fahrenheit during the same period, after remaining stable between 1900 and the mid-1960s. <snip>

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9359358/