In last week 3 Longs & 3 Shorts we highlighted an article from the Financial Times regarding how hurricanes were becoming more common and deadlier in the US and what the Americans are doing to forecast such hurricanes more accurately – see https://www.ft.com/content/
In the wake of this, some of you wrote in to say that there is material available on the internet which contradicts what the FT is saying i.e. which says that neither are hurricanes becoming more common nor is global warming the proximate cause of this. Michael Shellenberger’s detailed piece is one such article. {Note: NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.}
He says: “Claims that hurricanes are becoming more frequent are similarly wrong. “After adjusting for a likely under-count of hurricanes in the pre-satellite era,” writes NOAA, “there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts. The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s.” What’s more, NOAA expects a 25% decline in hurricane frequency in the future.
What about intensity? Same story. Explains NOAA, “after adjusting for changes in observing capabilities (limited ship observations) in the pre-satellite era, there is no significant long-term trend (since the 1880s) in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.“ Bottom line? “We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major.””
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