Study: Warming to cause fewer, but fiercer, Atlantic storms

Global warming will not have the influence on hurricanes along the Atlantic coast as often described by environmental activists such as Al Gore, a study concludes.

Based in part on the work of an Old Dominion University scientist, the study instead makes a slightly different forecast for the 21st century:

There likely will be fewer, not more, hurricanes and tropical storms during the century because of a warming planet. At the same time, the ones that do form are likely to be the bigger, more destructive kinds, the Category 4 and 5 hurricanes.

Based on a mix of 18 different computer models, the study "projects nearly a doubling of the frequency of Category 4 and 5 storms by the end of the 21st century," according to a copy released Thursday.

The entire study, to be published today as the cover story in the journal Science, predicts that this trend will be especially true in a zone between the Bahamas and the Southeast U.S. coast, including Virginia.

"That's probably the most alarming part of our report," said Robert E. Tuleya, an ODU adjunct professor and co-author of the study. "And that's certainly not very comforting to us who live and work on the East Coast."

Tuleya joined ODU after retiring in 2002 from the federal government's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey. There, he led efforts to develop computer models that more thoroughly predicted hurricane activity, formation and intensity. He described this latest study, conducted with colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as one that "both sides of the global warming debate will probably take and run with."

Tuleya said skeptics are likely to point to the study as evidence that existing computer models are flawed, and that predictions from environmentalists about climate change and hurricanes are exaggerated, if not wrong.

Those who believe global warming is real and a serious threat will cite the study for its forecast that hurricanes will be more intense and potentially devastating as the planet slowly heats up, he said.

Asked his own view, Tuleya said he is "more of a middle-of-the-road guy."

"The popular theory that if we heat up the Earth and the sea surface, we're going to increase hurricanes and their intensity is, to me, too simplistic," he said. "Hurricanes are much more complicated than that."

He said global warming and hurricane activity should be seen as "different animals."

"You can believe that global warming is due to man's influence and, at the same time, not believe in its impact on hurricanes."

Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, often is portrayed as a harbinger of things to come, the consequences of global warming. Tuleya said this perception is "a real stretch."

"There is little evidence tying Katrina to global warming and man's influence," he said. "It could easily be natural variability."

As for the future, he said the experience of Hurricane Andrew, which tore through south Florida in 1992, might be more instructive. Andrew was the only major hurricane that year but was one of the most destructive of its kind ever.

"Fewer storms but more powerful storms," Tuleya said.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com