Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek
Local events like this are not the same as global climate change, but they do appear to be apart of a larger trend. Since the 70s, ocean surface temperatures worlwide have risen about +1F. Those numbers have moved in sequence with global air temperatures, which have also risen up a degree. I think the warmest year ever recorded may have been in 2006, followed by 2005, with a few previous years close behind. Does this mean more hurricanes? Perhaps. Maybe not, which is why it's so hard to pin down these trends. Infact the past 10 stormy years in the North Atlantic were preceded by many quiet ones. This all happened the same time global temperatures were rising. I'll explain it this way. Worldwide, there's like an equilibrium. When the number of storms in the North Atlantic increases, there's usually a corresponding fall in the number of storms in other regions, but frequency is not the same as intensity. Also, I think I said earlier in a previous post that there have been two recent studies that demonstrate the difference and prove my point.
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I understand the difference between frequency and intensity. I wasn't correlating the two to mean the same thing. I was stating that the storms that occured in the early 2000s were stronger (severe) and there were more of them (frequency). That's why I used the word
and to include both words. Many people in the industry that I work in find that hurricane patterns operate in ten year cycles - i.e. ten years of active storm years, ten years of quiet, ten years active, ten years quiet. They also still think that we're only about halfway through the current ten year cycle of active storms.