Cool paper out today in GRL by Edmund Chang and Yanjuan Guo about the hurricane record. To try to estimate the number we might have missed when we had to depend on ship-board observations rather than satellites, Chang and Guo fed storm tracks from the satellite era into a simulation that included old-timey ship tracks to see how many would have been spotted and how many would have been missed:

It is estimated that the number of tropical cyclones not making landfall over any continent or the Caribbeans may have been underestimated by up to 2.1 per year during 1904–1913, with this number decreasing to 1.0 per year or less during the 1920s and later decades.

I’ll leave it to the smart people who have been following the hurricane global warming wars to explain the impact this might have on that debate. I just think it’s a really clever methodological trick.

Others at my work (I had nothing to do with this) offer their take on the Bingaman climate bill:

What does it take to ratchet back an energy-hungry nation’s contributions to global warming? In the Senate, at least 60 votes.

Among proposals now on the table, the one with the best chance of clearing that speed hump is sponsored by Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Other approaches take a more aggressive approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. But Bingaman’s bill plots the most realistic course to enactment and toward sustaining the effort over the long haul.

Continuing our down-under theme, word that despite the Aussies’ astonishingly bad day in the Tour de France Sunday, things in the south are looking up:

Families could pay less for their Christmas dinner this year as the drought eases throughout NSW, state Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald says.

Announcing the best drought figures since May last year, Mr Macdonald on Sunday said a bumper winter crop had been planted and if harvested food prices should fall “by Christmas”.

“Farmers have planted a record crop … the highest since 1983,” Mr Macdonald told reporters in Sydney.

“If this crop can be harvested later in the year following follow-up rain … we could see an easing in the prices of foodstuff in NSW.

Bingaman’s bill is in the hopper:

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman will introduce sweeping legislation today aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill, being introduced with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., would impose costs on industries that emit greenhouse gases, including coal, petroleum and natural gas.

By reaching across the entire U.S. economy, the bill should “reduce greenhouse gas emissions very substantially in coming decades,” Bingaman said in an interview.