A Reexamination of Climate Change Issues

”Climate’s Remote Control on Hurricanes”

 November 18, 2009

[Note: March 1, 2020— Links in this article have been updated.]



An article on the website Phyorg.com describes a recent scientific paper by Gabriel A. Vecchi that explains how normal climate variations have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the effects of global warming.  Also a 2007 paper by Gabriel Vecchi shows that increased wind shear from warming sea temperatures makes it more difficult for hurricanes to form and grow.


View the original Phyorg article here.

Following are excerpts from the article:

"Natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized changes in sea surface temperature, may have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the more uniform patterns of global warming, a report in this week's Nature suggests.. "

"In the debate over the effect of global warming on hurricanes, it is generally assumed that warmer oceans provide a more favorable environment for hurricane development and intensification.  However, several other factors, such as atmospheric temperature and moisture, also come into play."

...

"They found that warmer oceans do not alone produce a more favorable environment for storms because the effect of remote warming can counter, and sometimes overwhelm, the effect of local surface warming.  'Warming near the storm acts to increase the potential intensity of hurricanes, whereas warming away from the storms acts to decrease their potential intensity,' Vecchi said."

"Titled Effect of Remote Sea Surface Temperature Change on Tropical Cyclone Potential Intensity, their study found that long-term changes in potential intensity are more closely related to the regional pattern of warming than to local ocean temperature change.  Regions that warm more than the tropical average are characterized by increased potential intensity, and vice versa.  'A surprising result is that the current potential intensity for Atlantic hurricanes is about average, despite the record high temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean over the past decade,” Soden said.  'This is due to the compensating warmth in other ocean basins.'"

...

”While these results challenge some current notions regarding the link between climate change and hurricane activity, they do not contradict the widespread scientific consensus on the reality of global warming,” Soden noted.