[Dean's World] Dave Price: Researcher: Global Warming Reduces Hurricanes

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Researcher: Global Warming Reduces Hurricanes
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1176918851.shtml


   I'd been wondering about the effect on wind shear for awhile.
   Calculating that effect is obviously tricky, though. Fortunately,
   [1]scientists are on the job:

     Global warming could increase a climate phenomenon known as wind
     shear that inhibits Atlantic hurricanes, a potentially positive
     result of climate change, according to new research released on
     Tuesday.
     The study, to be published on Wednesday in Geophysical Research
     Letters, found that climate model simulations show a "robust
     increase" in wind shear in the tropical Atlantic during the 21st
     century from global warming.
     Wind shear, a difference in wind speed or direction at different
     altitudes, tends to tear apart tropical cyclones, preventing
     nascent ones from growing and already-formed hurricanes from
     becoming the monster storms that cause the most damage.

   Ouch, this guy is definitely getting the cold shoulder at the next
   global warming conference.
   As I've said before, I'm not sure we really know whether or to what
   extent global warming is a net positive or negative overall. There
   certainly seems to be too much alarmism, though -- Al Gore might like
   to claim we'll be inundated by hurricanes and a 20-foot sea level
   rise, but this tends to knock down the first assertion, and the
   [2]IPCC is saying the maximum sea level rise over the next century is
   23 inches.

References

   1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070417/sc_nm/weather_hurricanes_shear_dc_1
   2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC