Speaking of hurricanes

[conuly]

If you just would take a look-see down the list of "number of hurricanes per season", you might find it interesting, in an "interesting times" kind of way. Double digit hurricane seasons used to happen fairly infrequently, but the last time we had a season with less than 10 storms was back in 1997. Either we're flagging tropical storms and hurricanes at a weaker stage than we used to, always possible, or they're actually becoming more common. I don't know enough to know which it is.

Comments

[redbird]

According to Jeff Masters at Weather Underground, it's a bit of both. Satellites are catching storms that would once have been missed because they were short-lived or didn't come near land (or both). There are also decades-long patterns of hurricane frequency, and we're in a busy piece of the pattern.

It's not clear whether global warming is also affecting how many hurricanes we're getting. It almost certain is going to make them more intense, on average (by putting more energy into the system), but that's a different question.

[conuly]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense and is useful to know.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Little from column a, an awful lot from column b

So what do i say about climate change? Fuck it, we've missed the boat by at least 15 years. 15 years of ever increasing pollution globally.

We need to prepare for more extreme weather, more unnatural disasters, etc becasue we've already tipped the scales to the spill point. Go humanity.