Global warming causes fewer hurricanes?
The basic thesis of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is, if I understand it correctly from the cover art, that global warming — and then, global warming directly attributable to carbon emissions from industry (anthropogenic global warming, AGW) — is causing an increased number of hurricanes, and that these hurricanes are on average more violent. If true, it’s a damning condemnation of mankind’s contribution to climate change, and the impacts thereof.
Okay.
Except that a new study suggests that the real truth might be inconvenient for Mr. Gore and his thesis:
The study, produced by two respected South Florida researchers, found that the planet’s oceans have been warming for more than a century. No surprise there, but this may be:
Those warmer oceans are producing stronger crosswinds that tend to suppress the development and growth of hurricanes, according to the scientists.
“We found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. landfalling hurricanes as global oceans warmed up,” said Chunzai Wang, an oceanographer and climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research facility on Virginia Key.
Some previous studies found that global warming was increasing the number and intensity of hurricanes, a conclusion that supported the conventional wisdom that warmer seas automatically turbocharge hurricane development.
This latest study, conducted by Wang and Sang-Ki Lee of the University of Miami, will be published Wednesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Though it is still early in the process, the study raises questions about how the insurance industry, which sets rates based on risk models, will respond to reports that appear to contradict each other.
Many other studies have used computerized statistical models to predict the future consequences of global warming, but Wang and Lee conducted a rigorous “observational” examination of records reaching back to 1854.
WIND SHEAR
They found that nearly every ocean on Earth has warmed since then, producing a variety of effects including stronger crosswinds, a phenomenon called wind shear. When they matched those findings with records of hurricanes that have struck the United States, they discovered a correlation that illustrates the danger of making assumptions about the climate and challenges some previous findings and predictions.
“The increased wind shear coincides with a weak but [consistent] downward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes, a reliable measure of hurricanes over the long term,” the report found.
See, this is one of the reasons why I don’t buy in to the climate change alarmism that seems to permeate public discussion about the environment, because the studies contradict the living heck out of each other. One group of scientists, using such and such a method, claims that global warming is causing a particular trend (glacial melting, more violent hurricanes, what have you). But another group of scientists, using a different but seemingly no-less-valid method, claims that the opposite is taking place — that a particular trend is happening in the reverse direction (glacial formation, less violent hurricanes, what have you).
Obviously, both conclusions can’t be true, and I suspect that the real truth is to be found somewhere in between. The Earth’s climate is in a state of flux that, by and large, humanity has no control over (and almost no impact on), and we’re bound to see cyclical patterns to everything ranging from hurricane frequency and violence to glaciation. That’s just the way of the world on which we live. And to me, at least, there seems to be no cause for alarm.
(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: The Jawa Report)
Time Immortal | Reader Mail: NOAA and Global Warming (April 24, 2009, 2:40 pm).
[...] Whalley writes in, presumably in response to this article concerning a possible correlation between global warming and reduced numbers (and diminished [...]