Media Continue To Falsely Claim Atlantic Hurricanes Getting Stronger

Written by H. Sterling Burnett on October 27, 2023. Posted in Current News

The mainstream media, among them ABC News, Reuters, and the New York Times ran prominent stories claiming new research shows that Atlantic hurricanes have now become much more likely to strengthen into powerful hurricanes in a short period than in the past due to ‘climate change’. This is false

Whatever factors the studies researchers say are making powerful hurricanes more likely to form quickly, must be being counteracted by other factors because data shows that powerful hurricanes have been declining since 1990.

As ABC News reports in its article “Climate change making Atlantic hurricanes twice as likely to strengthen from weak to major intensity in 24 hours,” a new study in Science Direct claims warming oceans are making rapid powerful hurricane formation more likely to form.

“Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin may now be more than twice as likely to strengthen from a weak hurricane or tropical storm into a major hurricane in just 24 hours due to climate change and warming waters, a new study suggests,” says ABC News.

“Hurricanes are also now more likely to strengthen more rapidly along the East Coast of the U.S. than they were between 1971 and 1990, the paper, published Thursday in Scientific Reports found.”

Warm ocean temperatures are a necessary, but not a sufficient factor for hurricane formation.

Data indicate, regardless of ocean heating, hurricanes have not formed more frequently during the period of the study or since, and powerful hurricanes, Category 3 and above, have declined over the periods of comparison.

As a result, even if warming oceans make the rapid formation of powerful hurricanes more likely, confounding factors evidently not accounted for in the study have been suppressing the actual formation of powerful hurricanes.

Data presented in more than 100 previous Climate Realism posts here, here, here, and here, for example, clearly show that hurricane trends have been relatively flat over the past 50 years of modest warming, and the trend in powerful Atlantic hurricanes is downward (see the figures below)

Figure 1: Global Hurricane Frequency (all & major) — 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached at least hurricane force (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 64 knots).

The bottom time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached major hurricane strength (96 knots+). Adapted from Maue (2011) GRL. Source

As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits to finding no increase in the frequency or severity of hurricanes.

Also, the United States recently went through its longest period in recorded history without a major hurricane strike and recently experienced its fewest total hurricanes in any eight-year period.

And what’s true for the Atlantic hurricane basin is true for the other major hurricane basins as well. There has been no increase in the number or intensity of tropical cyclones since 1972 as the planet has modestly warmed.

Indeed, for some basins, the data suggests tropical cyclone frequency has declined over the past century.

What do the scientists mean when they say conditions are making it “more likely” or “twice as likely” for powerful hurricanes to form when fewer powerful hurricanes are forming?

It’s like a casino claiming they’ve made it more likely than ever for gamblers to win, even as casinogoers lose greater amounts more frequently: quite frankly, the claims and the facts just don’t line up.

Considering the IPCC’s pronouncements about finding no evidence human-caused warming is causing an increase in hurricane numbers or severity and the copious publicly available data that underpins the IPCC’s assessment, the media might finally get the hint on hurricanes.

Journalists should display a bit more skepticism concerning the latest novel and unverified study claiming hurricanes are getting worse due to global warming. Sadly, this is not the case.

The media follow the narrative that purported human-caused ‘climate change’ is causing worsening weather, in this case, hurricanes, regardless of facts demonstrating otherwise.

For the mainstream media concerning ‘climate change’, their motto seems to be, “damn the facts, full speed ahead with the climate crisis narrative.”

See more here climatechangedispatch

Header image: Politico

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