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(Galatians 4:16)

ENVIRO CRAZE WATCH:Hurricane Hysteria Revisited

Will global warming increase hurricane activity? Two studies published in the last week arrived at opposite conclusions.A link between warmer sea surface temperatures and increased North Atlantic hurricane activity “has been quantified for the first time,” according to a study by University College London researchers that was published in Nature (Jan. 30). They claim to have associated a 0.5 degree Celsius increase in sea surface warming with a 40 percent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity during 1996-2005 as compared to the average activity during 1950-2000.“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,” the Associated Press reported (Jan. 30).But the study result isn’t surprising considering it was derived from a computer model that included only two variables-sea surface temperature and atmospheric wind field-which the researchers claim explain about 75 percent of the variance in Atlantic hurricane activity between 1965-2005. They claim to have teased out the association between sea surface temperature and hurricane activity by statistically removing the influence of wind from the model.Sea surface temperatures and wind, however, aren’t the only factors affecting hurricane activity. The model omitted at least two other known factors-atmospheric humidity and sea level pressure-and other more mysterious factors such as the tendency of hurricane activity to occur in cycles that are decades long.Even though sea surface temperatures seem to have warmed, it’s not at all clear that Atlantic hurricane activity has truly increased. As recently described in World Climate Report, the average hurricane activity during 1995-2005 was greater than that during 1971-1994, but the 1970s and 1980s witnessed unusually low hurricane activity. So the increased hurricane activity of 1995-2005 “thus appears to represent a recovery to normal hurricane activity, rather than a direct response to increasing sea surface temperature,” according to World Climate Report.Finally, regardless of whether warmer sea surface temperatures are associated with increased hurricane activity, the University College London researchers admitted that, “Our analysis does not identify whether greenhouse gas-induced warming contributed to the increase in water temperature and thus to the increase in hurricane activity.”Since the entire global warming debate depends on whether manmade greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change, without a link between such emissions and sea surface temperature changes, the claimed sea surface temperature-hurricane activity link is, at best, an academic point.The other hurricane study, published in Geophysical Research Letters (Jan. 23) and not widely reported by the media, comes from climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
By Steven Milloy
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