The UPI story “Hurricane expert says warming not a factor“, is what piqued my intrest this morning in this subject. Chris
Landsea (the National Hurricane Center’s science officer) is no
stranger to the argument that - despite popular notions to the contrary
- global warming would not, and has not increased the overall
frequency or normalized damage caused by or frequency of land-falling
hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. This particular story
addresses a speaking engagement at the National Hurricane Conference in
Orlando, Fla., in which Mr. Landsea claimed global warming might
actually be slightly reducing hurricane activity in the Atlantic.
Although some news outlets would have us believe that there is some
division in the research community on this matter - it seems as though
a large portion of the opposition to Landsea’s view are either
disreputable researchers or those using faulty techniques to contradict
research that’s shown increases in Atlantic hurricane intensity in
response to growing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are unlikely. In
fact (from the UPI story linked above):
The other group, whose leaders
include Landsea, says the theory [that hurricane frequency increases
with global warming] is based on faulty data because many storms out in
the ocean went undetected before hurricane hunter flights began in the
1940s, the newspaper said.
In a note submitted to the Journal of Climate (Comments on “Impacts of CO2-Induced Warming on Simulated Hurricane Intensity and Precipitation…”) published in December 2005, Landsea (along with Patrick J. Michaels
and Paul C. Knappenberger) illustrates even further flaws in a study
oft-referenced by advocates of the increased hurricane argument (the
following quote is from the abstract - more details are borne out in
the remainder of the note):
In a simulation of enhanced tropical cyclones in a
warmer world, Knutson and Tuleya (authors of “Impacts of CO2-Induced
Warming on Simulated Hurricane Intensity and Precipitation…”) make
several assumptions that are not borne out in the real world. They
include an unrealistically large carbon dioxide growth rate, an overly
strong relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane
intensity, and the use of a mesoscale model that has shown little to no
useful skill in predicting current-day hurricane intensity. After
accounting for these inaccuracies, a detectable increase in Atlantic
hurricane intensity in response to growing atmospheric greenhouse gas
levels during this century becomes unlikely.
Many of Chris Landsea’s previous studies are available in pdf format here. Source
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