Apr 08 2008
Expert re-states that warming not factor
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…â€) 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.
Fascinating article. I covered a similar story on my blog (Skeptics Global Warming) a few days ago but I find it terribly funny that this flies in the face of Al Gore’s mockumentary, An Inconvenient Truth, as well as the fictional movie, The Day After Tomorrow. I’ve come to the conclusion that scientists know little about climate but unfortunately they open their collective mouths and predict doom and gloom, only to retract the statements later when new evidence is discovered.