WHERE ARE THE SUPER-CYCLONES?

Back in August Lateline ran a segment titled Scientists consider impact of increased cyclone activity featuring James Cook University cyclone researcher Professor Jonathan Knott. Knott warned that coastal developments are seriously threatened by so called super-cyclones, which will occur more frequently as the oceans continue to warm.

Knott has been warning about super-cyclones since at least as far back as 2001:

"These events occur every two to three hundred years and it has been a couple of hundred years since the last one hit this region here around Cairns. So we know that they're going to occur in the future. We don't know when they will occur, but we know that one will definitely occur in the relatively near future."

According to Knott the last super-cyclone hit Australia in the early 1800s. So, we're obviously overdue. And when one of these super-bad mothers does finally appear it will, of course, be blamed on anthropogenic global warming. It is odd, however, that global warming has yet to produce one of these super-storms. It is after all the hottest it's been in recorded history.