The samples gathered in 2001 from a region of woods near Valdosta, Ga., have yielded a
record of hurricane activity reaching back 220 years.
We can expect ongoing high
levels of hurricane activity — and very importantly high levels of hurricane landfalls — as long as the active era continues.»
All of these numbers tell a very simple story: just as there are active
periods of hurricane activity around the globe, there are inactive periods, and we are currently experiencing one of the most impressive inactive periods, now for almost 3 years.
The team reconstructed 220
years of hurricane activity in the area around southern Georgia, representing storms that struck anywhere from the adjacent gulf to South Carolina.
«The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations (and) cycles
of hurricane activity driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming,» he testified.
More generally, what
sort of hurricane activity should the Gulf Coast and the East Coast of the United States expect in the years ahead?
Specifically with regards to the energy and power companies, these contracts are for medium - range (days to weeks)
forecasts of hurricane activity and landfall impacts, and also energy demand (temperature).
They found that averaged sea surface temperatures over the MDR are the best predictor of Atlantic cyclone activity, followed by global average surface temperature, with MDR warming relative to the tropics being the worst
predictor of hurricane activity (Figure 1).
IER (7/15/13) reports: «The Institute for Energy Research compared the
impacts of hurricane activity and the Obama Administration's oil policies on production in the offshore Gulf of Mexico to see which has the larger and more lasting -LSB-...]
A new focused effort by a team of researchers analyzed 26
decades of hurricane activity, covering the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) through 2012 for the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico water regions.
Our more recent late 21st century
projections of hurricane activity continue to support the notion of increased intensity (~ 4 %) and near - storm rainfall rates (~ 10 to 15 %) for the Atlantic basin (Knutson et al. 2013) as well as for most other tropical cyclone basins (Knutson et al. 2015).
I'm interested in how a long duration
model of hurricane activity could show increases and decreases in hurricane strength, frequency and size, which could give a more clear image of how much GW is calling the shots, so to speak.
Of particular note, among other things, is dropping any mention that the present high
level of hurricane activity is thought to be «cyclic» through history.
In addition, although they have shown a correlation between their surge index and
measures of hurricane activity, it is far from a 1:1 relationship (correlations of 0.5 - 0.6 indicate that this index shares about 25 - 36 % of its variance with direct hurricane measures, leaving over 60 % to be explained).
«The bottom line is that we are in an unusually active
period of hurricane activity, as a result of a combination of natural variability and global warming,» Dr. Curry said.
An alternative hypothesis is that the reduction in sunlight beneath the dust layer cools the ocean surface, whose temperature is a well - known
predictor of hurricane activity (at least at the basin scale).
Emanuel found a close correlation between increases in this measure
of hurricane activity (which is likely a better measure of the destructive potential of the storms than previously used measures) and rising tropical North Atlantic SST, consistent with basic theoretical expectations.
In addition, a paper published just last month, used records of storm surges going back to 1923 as a measure
of hurricane activity.
This new empirical study presents the evidence from the last 260 years
of hurricane activity and the result is irrefutable as the adjacent chart reveals.