A new study to be published this week shows that increased wind shear might actually mean that global warming will result in less hurricanes.
This is highly controversial and most climatologists disagree with this finding. I think the trend over the last 20 years has been pretty clear that hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent, although it is true that we do not have a long enough record of hurricane tracking to draw any conclusions from this.
It is also true that increased wind shear reduces the likelyhood of hurricanes forming, and that is the leading explanation for why 2006 was a much quieter year than predicted. The increased wind shear was attributed to anomalies in the Pacific. I don’t see any evidence that this was anything other than a local phenomenon. After all, the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes ( typhoons, cyclones) were at or near record levels in the western Pacific and Indian oceans.
I think the bottom line from this article is that “”no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”
But regardless of whether or not this turns out to be true, does that mean we can relax about Global Warming? Absolutely not. Increased hurricanes are only one of many catastrophic developments being predicted by climate scientists, some of which are already happening, and some we probably can’t even foresee.
