Spotlight on Hurricane Climate Research

Eos, the online news site and magazine for American Geophysical Union (AGU), has a Research Spotlight article Role of Humans in Past Hurricane Potential Intensity is Unclear on work by AOES Faculty Laurie Trenary and Tim DelSole and their collaborators.

Human-induced Global Heating is expected to intensify hurricanes in the future, so the question of how much stronger and more damaging hurricanes will become has generated great interest among scientists and policymakers. A related question is whether past warming is responsible for recent increases in Atlantic hurricane intensity. Trenary et al. show that different climate models give inconsistent changes in hurricane potential intensity when driven by increases in greenhouse gases. Thus it is not possible yet to attribute changes in hurricane intensity to human activity.