Dave_Osterberg's Blog

On the last day of the recent Hurricane Conference, Dr. Chris Landsea from the National Hurricane Center presented talk about Global Warming and hurricanes. As I have mentioned before,  the great Miami hurricane of 1926 is the benchmark they use to estimate what further storms may do. If that same type of storm was to occur today it could cause 140-157 billion dollars in damage, double of what Hurricane Katrina caused.  So when they normalized that storm for 2008 damage, they went back and did the same with all of the destructive storms from the 1920s and 1930s. What they found was staggering. With the way the US coastline has been built up, if any of those type storms were to occur today the damage amounts would be staggering. So based on damage estimates alone you can't conclude that global warming is influencing hurricanes.

There seems to be a trend for more storms overall and more short-lived storms. After research they have concluded that technological advances are the reason for this. Several decades ago they didn't have satellites and the aircraft data like they do now. This plus the advanced computer modeling is allowing us to see storms they couldn't see back then.

Then there were two things that actually got my attention that he mentioned.  First was when he made the statement that gloabl warming may actually decrease the amount of storms. Yes indeed wouldn't that be interesting. Even though sea surface temps continue to rise, if indeed global warming continues this may cause more wind shear in the Tropical Atlantic.  Think of it like a constant El Nino. During one, it tends to cause more wind shear and less storms overall. It doesn't mean that big ones can't form, just that there may be fewer. So it would be an interesting battle between wind shear and warmer water as to which would be the dominant factor in this scenario.

And the last fact is a bit alarming. In the 1920s and 1930s there were a lot of major hurricanes that hit Florida. GIven the same multi-decadal swing of storms we are now in a more active period and this may likely happen again.