Climate News

The number of Atlantic storms with magnitude similar to killer Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, could rise sharply this century, environmental researchers reported on Monday.

Scientists have long studied the relationship between warmer sea surface temperatures and cyclonic, slowly spinning storms in the Atlantic Ocean, but the new study attempts to project how many of the most damaging hurricanes could result from warming air temperatures as well.

The extreme storms are highly sensitive to temperature changes, and the number of Katrina-magnitude events could double due to the increase in global temperatures that occurred in the 20th century, the researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If temperatures continue to warm in the 21st century, as many climate scientists project, the number of Katrina-strength hurricanes could at least double, and possibly rise much more, with every 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) rise in global temperatures, the researchers said.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has run computer simulations suggesting global temperatures could rise by between 3.6 degrees and 10.8 degrees F (2 degrees and 6 degrees C) by century's end.

To figure out how many of the most extreme hurricanes these higher temperatures might spawn, Aslak Grinsted of the Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen and his co-authors looked at storm surges, which are often the most damaging aspect of these monster storms.  More>>