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Global Warming Link to Hurricane Intensity Questioned

Global Warming Link to Hurricane Intensity Questioned

An expert with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is questioning the connection between climate change and the appearance of more intense hurricanes in recent years. Historical data on hurricanes is too crude to determine long-term trends in intensity, says Christopher Landsea, a science and operations officer with NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

This will always be the problem with global warming: DATA. It is hard to have good data on the past to predict what is going to happen in the future. In the case of hurricanes, the data only goes back 200 years or so and intensity measurements were not uniformly done until the time of satellites.

I say we should keep hurricanes out of the debate due to the poor data availability. Unfortunately, high profile global warming proponents have already linked hurricanes directly to global warming. Al Gore even went so far as to say: "Mother Nature has spoken". I ask, what will happen if this hurricane season is calm with few high-intensity storms and none that severely impact land? The pundits will say "Mother Nature has changed her mind." You heard it here first.

posted by Jim VAT @ 7:18 AM