From the AGU’s Conference of Experts report on hurricanes and the Gulf Coast:
The observed trends in SST and hurricane intensity cannot be explained by natural variability alone.
jfleck at inkstain
A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
Why, I do believe it may be the emerging consensus. Imagine that.
Check out the participant list, not so much for who was there but who wasn’t there.
The pub list is also interesting. RP Jr. should be thrilled to be among the most-cited, albeit on his disaster cost stuff rather than anything co-authored with the NHC crowd. Among other absences of note, Goldenberg et al (2001) has gone to sleep with the fishes.
I still have to say that after watching the emails fly on the tropical cyclones email list over the past two weeks, a list that contains almost everybody of importance working on tropical cyclones in the world and to which Holland, Curry and Webster have also been posting to in the past two weeks, anybody would be very hard pressed to say that an “emerging consensus” exists amongst that group of experts. Mostly what I’ve seen are very reasonable, very well-considered emails poking major holes in the data Webster used, among other aspects to the “debate.”
I’ll continue to maintain that while it is very reasonable to infer that increased global T –> stronger hurricanes, “reasonable” means nothing in systems that can be as counter-intuitive as climate/weather.
Now THAT’s the kind of comment that lends strength to blogs and John’s site.
Best,
D
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