21 November 2005. A World to Win News Service. While the US government has insisted that global warming doesn’t exist, most scientists are convinced otherwise. Some researchers say global warming was a major factor in the deadly series of hurricanes (as the violent tropical storms or cyclones that hit the Americas are called) that struck the Caribbean, Central America and the US recently. What is the link between global warming and tropical storms? What are the causes of global warming? To what extent is global warming caused by human activity, and what can be done about it? The following two-part article examines these questions.

Hurricanes, climate change and global warming

21 November 2005. A World to Win News Service. While the US government has insisted that global warming doesn’t exist, most scientists are convinced otherwise. Some researchers say global warming was a major factor in the deadly series of hurricanes (as the violent tropical storms or cyclones that hit the Americas are called) that struck the Caribbean, Central America and the US recently. What is the link between global warming and tropical storms? What are the causes of global warming? To what extent is global warming caused by human activity, and what can be done about it? The following two-part article examines these questions.

The international science journal Nature reported that possible links between hurricane formation and global warming are a contentious issue in climate policy. The depth of the divide between supporters and sceptics was already apparent in January, when US meteorologist Chris Landsea resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – an organisation working with the United Nations Environmental Programme. Landsea was protesting against statements made by his panel colleague, Kevin Trenberth, who had argued for a link between global warming and storms in a press conference.

Nature wrote, “Trenberth’s view is supported by the most recent and solid analysis of hurricane destructiveness over the past 30 years, by leading US hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.