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The Gathering Winds
A satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico shows Hurricane Rita, one of several powerful storms that wrought destruction along U.S. coasts this year.
(National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration Via Reuters)
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Some environmental groups touted the studies as a reason to immediately restrict carbon emissions in an effort to slow global warming. At the same time, other researchers launched tirades against the findings.
William Gray of Colorado State University, well known for his annual hurricane season forecasts, was at the forefront of the criticisms.
"If true, this is a very important finding that has great relevance as regards the globe's future climate and future hurricane destruction," he wrote in rebuttal to Emanuel's paper. "But the author's 'apparent' blockbuster results and his interpretation of his calculations are not realistic."
There are at least two fundamental problems with the studies, according to Gray and others.
The first is that Atlantic hurricane activity has long been known to undergo fluctuations over long periods. The flip-flops between active and inactive hurricane periods in the Atlantic are attributed to long-term trends in currents and salinity.
The 1950s and 1960s saw lots of hurricane activity, for example, whereas the '70s, '80s and early '90s did not. The uptick in hurricanes that began in 1995 had long been anticipated, though researchers hadn't been sure when exactly the change would come.
Critics said the rise in Atlantic hurricanes that the papers detected was probably the cause of this natural "oscillation," not global warming.
The second flaw in the papers, according to critics, is that both papers are based on hurricane records over decades, and those vary in quality, largely because the means of measuring hurricane intensity have changed over time.
In the northwest Pacific, for example, which sees a large share of hurricane-force storms, records of storm intensity have at times been based on flight observations and sometimes on satellite images.
"In a nutshell, the data sets they're using aren't reliable enough to answer those important questions," said NOAA hurricane researcher Christopher W. Landsea. "The data sets don't take into account the different ships, the different planes, the different satellite imagery. The data is affected by the different ways of measuring."
For all the skepticism from some quarters, the arguments have been persuasive elsewhere. Willoughby said he has been leaning toward the global warming explanation and that the two new papers helped.
Still, he said, it is too early to tell.
"Right now, I don't think there is a consensus answer," he said. "There are just a lot of smart people doing good work on a very important question."
