From Dr. Roy Spencer’s Global Warming Blog
September 29, 2022 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
With Hurricane Ian (now a tropical storm) leaving Florida’s east coast, there’s no shortage of reports that the storm is caused by climate change. Even if those claims do include data to support their case, those data are usually for the regions and time periods where the cherries were picked. If global warming causes a change in tropical cyclone activity, it will show up in global statistics.
The latest peer-reviewed study (March 2022, here) of wind energy accumulated in tropical cyclones since 1990 (when we started having enough global data) shows decrease in storm activity. There was an increase in activity in the Atlantic, but this was combined with an even larger decline in activity in the Pacific, due to the shift from El Nino to La Nina conditions during the period. there.
So yes, there is climate change associated with an increase in Atlantic activity in recent decades. But that’s natural.
Just look at the numbers of Global hurricanes since 1980, we don’t see a clear trend.
Even if we have seen an increase, improvements in global satellite monitoring will be responsible for some of that. It is not possible to talk about meaningful global statistics (especially trends) prior to the 1980s due to lack of satellite data. The ships’ chances are not enough to calculate the trend, especially since the ships try to avoid the storm, not the sample.
Based on the document research of hurricanes affecting the Lesser Antilles since the previous 1600s found a downward trend (not statistically significant) in hurricane activity over the period 1690-2007.
In my 2017 Kindle book Force Majeure: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed for Global Warming, I looked at the major hurricanes that hit Florida, no trends. With Hurricanes Ian and Michael (2018) added to the dataset, there are still no statistically significant trends in the intensity or frequency of major hurricanes hitting Florida.
Of course storm damage increased significantly during the same period, but this was due to the explosive development of coastal infrastructure there. Miami had only 444 inhabitants in 1896, and now the metro area has more than 6,000,000 inhabitants. As seen in the following chart, Florida’s population has grown by more than 40 people since 1900.
Florida’s annual population, 1900 to 2021.
Given that storms will always be with us, what is the best defense against them? Richness. Hurricane Ian made landfall with sustained winds of 150 mph, but warnings from modern instrumentation and forecasting tools led to mass evacuations. At this point, only 5 deaths have been reported (I’m sure that number will increase). Modern building codes help reduce wind damage. I watched hurricane hunter Reed Timmer live from witnessing Hurricane Ian as it made landfall and I didn’t see any roofs fly away from the house (but I’m sure some did) . However, flood damage caused by high tides will be enormous and costly.
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