Hurricane strength has long been understood to correlate quite tightly with SST:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr/Fig_PDI_SST.html
Recently someone used this data to conclude that global warming has no effect on increasing hurricane strength/number:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
The data is specifically for the number of US hurricane strikes.
But it seems obvious that, while this specific variable may not be increasing, the total number of hurricanes is:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr/Fig_Hurr_major_USland_count.html
Tastiness of cherries aside, is there any good reason to focus only on "number of hurricanes which strike the US" and not on an increase in hurricane strength/frequency as a whole?
By the way, for the first graph:
"PDI is a combined measure of Atlantic hurricane frequency, intensity, and duration."
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr_webpage.html#section1
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr/Fig_PDI_SST.html
Recently someone used this data to conclude that global warming has no effect on increasing hurricane strength/number:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
The data is specifically for the number of US hurricane strikes.
But it seems obvious that, while this specific variable may not be increasing, the total number of hurricanes is:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr/Fig_Hurr_major_USland_count.html
Tastiness of cherries aside, is there any good reason to focus only on "number of hurricanes which strike the US" and not on an increase in hurricane strength/frequency as a whole?
By the way, for the first graph:
"PDI is a combined measure of Atlantic hurricane frequency, intensity, and duration."
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr_webpage.html#section1