HURRICANES INCREASING TO NORMAL


A study of Caribbean coral reveals some interesting hurricane history:

The team found that the frequency of major hurricanes decreased gradually from the 1760s, reaching an all-time low in the 1970s and 1980s.

Since then, numbers of large hurricanes have started to climb again, leading to several very active hurricane seasons. Most notable amongst these was the summer of 2005, which culminated in the devastation of New Orleans in the US by hurricane Katrina (see Hurricane season refuses to blow over).

In 2005, Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, US, published a study showing that the frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones has almost doubled globally since the early 1970s (Science, vol 309, p 1844).

Nyberg says that, when considered in the context of the past three centuries, this sudden burst of large hurricanes is simply a return to the norm.

Consensus violation alert!