Number and strength of hurricanes stubbornly fail to increase
Jazz Shaw Sep 07, 2021 9:49 AM ET
NOAA
Close on the heels of Hurricane Ida, Hurricane Larry is coming and is likely to target the east coast. (Is it just me, or is it hard to get too worried about a hurricane named “Larry?”) Prior to that, we saw Hurricane Henri delivering a bit less of a punch, but it still generated a lot of flooding and damage. By this point, we’re already seeing the usual, seasonal headlines about how we’re getting so many more major storms and higher levels of damage from them, so it must be time to ban fracking again, right? Climate change must be at the bottom of this horror show, just like the wildfires out west and the arrival of the murder hornets. But as the Wall Street Journal points out this week, Hoover Institution visiting fellow Bjorn Lomborg has been digging through the numbers and the reality of recorded storm patterns is quite different than what the prevailing narrative would have you believe. We’ve actually been seeing slightly fewer hurricanes in recent years and their average intensity is also lower than in previous decades. (Subscription required)
Hurricane season has arrived in the Atlantic Ocean. Already this summer Hurricanes Henri and Ida have caused headline-generating damage and flooding in the Gulf states, the Southeast and the Middle Atlantic states. Yet despite what you may have heard, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. In fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900.
Airplanes and satellites have dramatically increased the number of storms that scientists can spot at sea today, making the frequency of landfall hurricanes—which were reliably documented even in 1900—a better statistic than the total number of Atlantic hurricanes.
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/07/number-and-strength-of-hurricanes-stubbornly-fail-to-increase-n414118
