The aftermath of Hurricane Andrew.
After a study last week confirmed the link between climate change and increased rainfall in the UK, a new study published yesterday has made the connection between climate change and a doubling in the number of Atlantic hurricanes in an average season over the past 100 years.
This from our Making Waves blog:
Hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean water and warm moist air, so it's predicted that global warming will mean more, and stronger tropical storms. It's tricky testing this against observations though because there's no data about storms out at sea until relatively recently. Plane observations started in 1944 and satellites in 1970.
But the scientists behind a new study are confident they've shown a connection.
And from The Guardian:
The increase in storm frequency was most recently visible in 2005, with more than double the average number of storms, including Hurricane Katrina, the most costly natural disaster in US history. It claimed almost 2,000 lives.
In the new study, Greg Holland of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, calculated the average number and intensity of Atlantic storms over the past century and identified three distinct climate regimes.
The first, between 1905 and 1930, had an average of six major storms a year, four of which were hurricanes, meaning wind speed exceeded 74mph. During the second, from 1931 to 1994, the annual average rose to 10 storms, five of which were hurricanes.
From 1995 to 2005, there were an average of 15 storms a year, eight of which were hurricanes. According to the researchers, this last period has not yet stabilised, so the average could rise still further.
Last year, the hurricane season was less active than 2004 and 2005 because of El Niño, an upwelling of warm water off the coast of Ecuador. But even that activity was higher than a century ago with five hurricanes. The research comes as MPs warn that the government must strengthen climate change targets. They also call for the UK's share of emissions from international aviation and shipping to be included in goals in the draft climate change bill.
