Warm oceans will lead to fewer hurricanes
How many of you, going back to the summer of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, remember all the global warming stories the hoaxers were out pushing? "This is only a forerunner of what it's going to be! It's going to be so bad; it's going to be really worse. It's global warming, and global warming is causing increased sea surface temperatures, and the increased sea surface temperatures, why, they're providing all the fuel for these hurricanes, and it's going to be horrible!"
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Well, from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale: "Following in the footsteps of an earlier study, government scientists [yesterday] said warmer oceans should translate to fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States. The reason: As sea surface temperatures warm globally, sustained vertical wind shear increases. Wind shear makes it difficult for storms to form and grow," because the shear just rips the tops off of them. "'Using data extending back to the middle 19th century, we found a gentle decrease in the trend of US landfalling hurricanes when the global ocean is warmed up,' Chunzai Wang, a physical oceanographer and climate scientist with NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, said." Wow! It was supposed to be just the opposite.
Now, what are the global warming hoaxers going to do with this? The ocean temperatures is rising, and they say that's due to global warming but that results in fewer hurricanes. That means global warming has good effects as well as bad. Do you think they'll take that into account in their hysterical effort to control our lives? Don't count on it.
Jack Stuckey
Dover
Just tossing out this other view which could pull the wool over your eyes until you read the NOAA scientist's quote at the very end of the article. This is an AP story but I found it linked on the Daytona/Volusia county newspaper site.
WARMER ATLANTIC WORSENS HURRICANES
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the water in the hurricane breeding grounds of the Atlantic warms one degree in the dead of summer, overall hurricane activity jumps by half, according to a new study.
Scientists have long known that hurricanes get their enormous energy from warm waters, so the warmer the water, the more fuel a storm has to either start up or get stronger. The study calculates how much storm frequency and strength is due to warmer sea water, said author Mark Saunders, professor of climate prediction at the University College London.
Saunders found a distinct numerical connection between the ups and downs of water temperatures and how nasty hurricane season gets. That helps explain why hurricanes have been so much worse in the past dozen years, and even why 2007 - with waters slightly cooler than normal - was an exception and not that bad a hurricane year, Saunders said.
"It's very surprisingly sensitive to small changes in sea surface temperature," he said.
His study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, found that changes in wind patterns caused a bigger shift in hurricane activity, but he concentrated his analysis on what sea temperature did to storms. Saunders didn't look at what caused the temperature fluctuations, although he believes that climate change is a contributing factor.
Scientists have clashed in recent years about whether man-made global warming has already increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic by warming the sea and shifting wind patterns, and what global warming may mean in the future.
Saunders focused on the water temperature in a band of tropical sea that stretches from around Puerto Rico and the northern coast of South America east to near the coast of Africa since 1950. He looked at hurricane activity since 1965.
The average August-September water temperature in the region is about 81 degrees. Saunders calculated that for every one degree Fahrenheit increase:
- Overall hurricane activity - a combination of frequency and hurricane strength - increases 49 percent.
- The number of intense hurricanes, with winds over 110 mph, increases 45 percent.
- The number of hurricanes of any size increases 36 percent.
- The number of tropical storms increase 31 percent.
For example, 2005 was the most active hurricane season on record, and Atlantic water temperatures were the warmest, about 1.4 degrees above normal. That hurricane season set a new high with 28 storms and 13 hurricanes. Seven of the hurricanes were major storms.
In 1971, when the water temperatures were the coolest, there were 13 storms and six hurricanes, including one major one.
The index of overall hurricane activity was more than twice as high in 2005 as it was in 1971.
The scientists who have linked global warming to stronger storms said the study makes sense, and is, if anything, just repeating and refining what they have already said. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Chris Landsea, whose studies have dismissed such links, said Saunders' study doesn't go back far enough to exclude natural cyclical causes for the hurricane activity changes.
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On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature
Global warming is a hoax? You just want it to be, Mr. Stuckey, so you won't be wrong. But you are wrong Mr. Stuckey. Do you think pollution has no negative effect on the earth... at all? If you don't then may your meals consist of corporate waste and your air be filled with smog!
Keep your head in the sand stuckey. That should be the last place to get warm.