NY TImes article on Global Warming......

[schmita]

being the cause of increased hurricane strenght.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/scien ... icane.html

[PurdueWx80]

OK, for those of you who haven't read the article, that is not what it says. The basic gist is that if and when global temperatures increase, as is now forecast by most, if not all global circulation/climate models, then the strength of hurricanes MAY increase and so MAY their rainfall. I suggest you sign up for the NY Times (it's free) and read the article to draw your own conclusions. Newspapers and other media have a way of dumbing down science, so PLEASE go to the following site to download the PDF and read the peer-reviewed scientific article from the Journal of Climate this article was based on.

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibl ... tk0401.pdf

[x-y-no]

Beat me to it, Purdue ... This has nothing to do with current stom intensity and everything to do with what the GFDL model thinks would happen in a warmer regime.

[Anonymous]

being the cause of increased hurricane strenght.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/scien ... icane.html

Oh well... the NY York Times... HUGE SURPRISE!

[PurdueWx80]

being the cause of increased hurricane strenght.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/scien ... icane.html

Oh well... the NY York Times... HUGE SURPRISE!

What the NY Times says is basically correct if you read the JOC paper...what the author of the post here said was very wrong. Don't get me started w/ "liberal bias" crap...there is none of that going on with this report.

[tronbunny]

Purdue...
If I get started on that, I'll be suspended.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHHH!

and here's what I think of NYT

[PurdueWx80]

From Dr. Gray's new analysis:

Is Global Warming Involved?


       Florida residents should not interpret the four damaging hurricane landfalls to their state in August-September to be related, in any way, to the much publicized human-induced global warming hypothesis. Although an unusual event (likely occurring about once every 100 years), these four strong landfall events are a rare combination of an above-average season of major hurricane activity together with unusually favorable broad-scale steering currents that drove mid-Atlantic tropical cyclones westward instead of allowing them to recurve. Such a combination of high tropical cyclone frequency and special westward steering currents is not frequent but well within the range of natural climate fluctuations and might be considered from a statistical point-of-view as a rare 2 1/2 sigma event. There would be little discussion of this year's hurricanes activity if these four major storms had not made U.S. landfall, which could have just as easily occurred


Although the Atlantic basin has been very active this year, as have eight of the last 10 Atlantic basin seasons, the other six global tropical storm basins which account for about 88 percent of the globe's approximately 80 named tropical cyclones per year have not shown a similar increase. In fact, global net tropical cyclone activity has actually shown a small decrease during the last 10 years. If global warming (natural or man-made) were the cause of the increased Atlantic basin activity, we should have seen an increase in the other storm basins as well. This has not occurred.


Atlantic basin major hurricane activity can increase or decrease during periods when the mean global surface temperature is warming or when it is cooling. During the period of the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, when the globe was warming, Atlantic basin major hurricane activity was below average. During the period of the mid-1940s to early 1970s there was a small net cooling of the global surface temperature, and Atlantic basin major hurricane activity was above average. We can explain these multi-decadal variations in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity as resulting from multi-decadal variations in the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation (see our previous forecast discussions). Paleo climatology data has shown that such multi-decadal Atlantic thermohaline circulation changes have occurred many times in the past.


There has been a small global surface warming since the mid-1970s and when averaged over the last 100 years. We believe this global warming is due to a slowing down of the global ocean's sinking (or deep water formation) in the North and South polar regions. The globe undergoes warming when polar region deep-water formation is reduced as it was between the late 1960s to mid-1990s and on average over the last century. By contrast, during the periods between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s, there was enhanced polar deep-water formation, and the global mean surface temperature underwent a modest cooling.


We believe that the global mean surface temperature changes that have been observed over the last 30 years and over the last century are of mostly natural origin (ocean-forced) and likely not a result of any human influence. We do not attribute Florida's four landfalling hurricanes of the last two months to be related in any way to human influences.

[Stormsfury]

Dr Gray's discussion couldn't have been more spot on ... and absolutely an AWESOME discussion. I recommend that everyone goto MWatkins' thread elsewhere and get the link and read it ...

SF