The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Hurricanes
As a follow-up to Tavis’s post on Global Warming and Hurricanes, it’s worth pointing out the research covered in a St. Petersburg Times story, which suggests that the increase in hurricane numbers that has occurred over the past decade is caused not by global warming, but by a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. From the story:
“‘The consensus among hurricane researchers and forecasters is that the hurricane landfalls of 2004 resulted from the AMO, a natural cycle of hurricane activity, combined with a lapse in the incredibly good fortune of the previous 35 years,’ Hugh Willoughby, a hurricane researcher at Miami’s Florida International University, wrote in an essay last fall.‘The effect of global warming was at most second order,’ he wrote, ‘and probably not present at all.’”
Having not read his work, I have questions as to how he came to this conclusion, as it appears that he was only using data from the North Atlantic. I’d think it prudent to look at the global satellite data of ocean temperatures used in James Hansen’s recent publications, or at very least to look at records of typhoons in the Pacific, before dimissing global waming as a cause. Willoughby’s explanation should however serve as a warning to those who are making broad statements about the effects of global warming on hurricane activity that the science on this particular matter is less settled than the science behind the phenomenon of global warming at large.