The concept that stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean is caused largely by global warming is further bolstered by fresh evidences, though the trend doesn’t hold even for other oceans of the world.
These new findings are reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by atmospheric scientists. The study is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C. affiliates it.
Jay Fein, program director in NSF’s division of atmospheric sciences said,
Documenting trends in hurricane intensity is made more difficult by sparse observations and has led to debates about whether the trends are real, or are artifacts of observations. This study has directly addressed this point by using, for the first time, a new satellite data set to look at hurricane trends.
James Kossin, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said,
This new data set is unlike anything that’s been done before. It’s going to serve a purpose as being the only globally consistent data set around. The caveat of course, is that it only goes back to 1983.
Photo Credit: NOAA