Rising sea water temperatures could reduce Hurricane’s hitting the US

The potentially disastrous rising sea water temperatures that have been linked to the effects of global warming could have a beneficial side effect, by decreasing the number of hurricanes making landfall in the US, at least according to new research released this week.

Published in Geophysical Research Letters, this new study calls into question other research that suggested that, global warming is contributing to the increase in the intensity, and frequency, of the Atlantic hurricanes.

It also reiterates the view that warmer ocean temperatures, may result in instabilities in the atmosphere that could potentially, prevent tropical storms from forming.
These huge Atlantic storms are pivotal to the global insurance, energy, and commodities markets, this was brought into focus by the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, that heavily disrupted, oil and gas rig’s located in the Gulf of Mexico.

This study would suggest that warmer oceans that are being caused by greenhouse gas emissions, are the cause of the rise in worldwide temperatures, and are linked to a large increase in vertical wind shear, differences in wind speeds at different altitudes in the atmosphere can rip apart nascent cyclones.

Hurricanes grow by feeding on warm ocean waters, recent research that global warming could be causing even more powerful storms to form.

This study, produced by Chunzai Wang an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a leading scientist at the University of Miami, Sang-Ki Lee, reviewed one hundred and fifty years of hurricane records, and they discovered a small but significant reduction, in the number of hurricanes that make landfall in the United States as the ocean waters have warmed.

The researchers stated: “The attribution of the recent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity to global warming is premature. Global warming may decrease the likelihood of hurricanes making landfall in the United States,”

Recent research has focused on the numbers of hurricanes and tropical storms found out in the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean, Wang claims: “the number of those hurricanes actually hitting the United States is a much better indicator.”

Before the 60’s, when satellites made it much easier to see storms, some hurricanes and tropical storms went totally undetected and recorded because they never made it near to land.
Thus, scientists tracking long term storm frequency trends of Atlantic storm systems are working with incomplete data. Wang also said “We believe U.S. landings for hurricanes are most reliable measurements over the long term,”.

This new study points out that the warming of the Indian and Pacific oceans increases wind shear in the Atlantic, and that rising sea water temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic would decrease the shear.

Theses 2 effects conflict, but the final effect is the increase in wind shear in the Atlantic hurricane development area, which stretches from the western coasts of continental Africa all the way to Central America.

“The Pacific and Indian warming wins and the result is a decrease in landfalling U.S. hurricanes,” Wang wrote.

Back in 2004, no less than four major hurricanes struck Florida, and caused billions of dollars worth of destruction. In a record breaking 2005, 28 tropical storms were formed in the Atlantic, one of which was the devastating Katrina, which left 1,500 people dead and reeked $80 billion worth of damage.