That is the bottom line of a study reporting that we can have a lot of hurricanes or intense hurricanes — but not a lot of intense hurricanes. And no one knows what effect (if any) warming might have.
The NOAA media release is here. The abstract is below.
Correction: Gulf of Mexico, not Caribbean Sea.
They couldn’t predict it in colder climate either. Galveston flood, start of the 20th century: “A hurricane can never form in the Caribbean Sea because the conditions necessary for their formation do not exist there.” Sound like “The science is settled!”
I guess NOAA is trying to mitigate the slap-down PRIOR to the new boss coming in 🙂
No surprise here! As CO2 has risen, both Hurricane frequency and intensity (measured by ACE) have decreased.
Now inverse correlation is not necessarily causation, but if the rug hasn’t been pulled out from the AGW foolishness by this study, at least it received a very hard tug!!!