[There has been no overall increase in the number of tropical storms over the past three decades, but] Category 4 and 5 hurricanes are making up a larger share of the total number of hurricanes, ... made up about 20 percent of all hurricanes in the 1970s, but over the last decade they account for about 35 percent of these storms. |
Category 4 and 5 storms are also making up a larger share of the total number of hurricanes. Category 4 and 5 hurricanes made up about 20% of all hurricanes in the 1970s, but over the last decade they accounted for about 35% of these storms. |
certainly has an element that global warming is contributing to. |
Even with imperfect data and some uncertainty, it's hard to imagine what kind of errors might be in the data set to give you a long-term trend. |
Global warming is sending sea-surface temperatures up, so we're looking at an increase in hurricane intensity globally. |
If humans are increasing sea surface temperatures and if you buy this link between increases rising sea surface temperatures and increases in hurricane intensity, that's the conclusion you come to. |
If you examine the intensification of a single storm, or even the statistics on intensification for a particular season, factors like wind shear can play an important role. However, there is no global trend in wind shear or the other factors over the 35-year period. |
Sea surface temperature is the one that consistently comes up. What we found is that all the variables have an effect, but those tend to be on a storm-by- storm basis and not over a longer period. |
That may seem like a small number, but it makes a huge difference in ocean temperature and it has many consequences. |
This firms up the link between sea surface temperatures and hurricane intensity. It is an important piece of the global warming debate. |
This new study really nails down that link. |
This puts the argument to rest. |
This study really shores up the link between rising sea temperature and the intensity of hurricanes. |
This trend in sea surface temperature that's sort of relentlessly rising and the hurricane intensity that's relentlessly rising (means that) it's with some confidence we can say that these two things are connected and that there's probably a substantial contribution from greenhouse warming. |
We found no long-term trend in things like wind shear. There's a lot of year-to-year variability, but there's no global trend. In any given year, it's different for each ocean. |