200 years of trend following: in case you were curious about how robust trend following has been over time, this research paper provides a pretty compelling case. (newtraderu.com)
The IPCC notes in its most recent scientific assessment that there are «[n] o robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin,» and that there are «no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency.» (heritage.org)
This is also the motivation for other alternatives such as robust trend estimation (which minimizes the distance rather than squared distance from the linear model; but it doesn't have the nice closed - form analytical solution that least squares has). (realclimate.org)