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![]() January 31, 2008 The study, conducted by Professor Mark Saunders and Dr Adam Lea of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre and the UCL Tropical Storm Risk forecasting venture, finds that local sea surface warming was responsible for about 40 percent of the increase in Atlantic hurricane activity (relative to the 1950-2000 average) between 1996 and 2005. The study also finds that the current sensitivity of tropical Atlantic hurricane activity to sea surface warming is large, with a 0.5 degree C increase in sea surface temperature being associated with an approximate 40 percent increase in hurricane activity and frequency. The research focuses on storms that form in the tropical North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico – a region which produced nearly 90 percent of the hurricanes that reached the United States between 1950 and 2005. To quantify the role of sea warming it was necessary to first understand the separate contributions of atmospheric circulation and sea surface temperature to the increase in hurricane frequency and activity. "Our analysis does not identify whether greenhouse gas-induced warming contributed to the increase in water temperature and thus to the increase in hurricane activity. However, it is important that climate models are able to reproduce the observed relationship between hurricane activity and sea surface temperature so that we can have confidence in their reliability to project how hurricane activity will respond to future climate change." Recommend this Article to a Friend Back to: News |
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