Cooling It On Global Warming's Hurricane Links

Once again, scientists whose public positions are predicated on global warming are forced to admit that the science - the actual data - is suggesting something quite different than what they were claiming would happen.

This time, a prominent scientist, Tom Knutson, who had claimed that the US would see more hurricanes as a result of global warming, now suggests that the US will see fewer storms because he claims the warmer waters will result in fewer storms.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released yesterday.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming's wrath.

Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the increase to a natural multidecade cycle.

Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton, NJ, has warned about the harmful effects of climate change, and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration.

His new study, published online yesterday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century, the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent.

The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors.

That would be counterintuitive considering that hurricanes feed off warm waters to build strength and intensity. The warmer the waters, the stronger the storms can be. That's why recent hurricanes like Katrina exploded into massive storms before landfall - because they hit the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall. It's also why strong hurricanes are less prevalent along the Northeast coast - because the waters don't get nearly as warm and the hurricanes can't sustain their strength in cooler waters.

I'm inclined towards the multidecade cycle of storm intensity as we've seen that numbers of storms annually trends towards cycles of various durations. Combine that with solar influences, and global warming can be explained with natural phenomenon that have a far greater impact on the global climate than anything man can do.