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Maybe Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have gone through the trouble of putting together a 430-page report outlining a $19.5 billion plan to save New York from the threat of climate change had Hurricane Sandy not hit last year and inflicted some $20 billion in New York City alone. But somehow I doubt it. There’s a reason that belief in man-made global warming tends to spike after extreme weather. Heat waves are uncomfortable and drought is frightening, but it’s superstorms—combined with the more gradual effects of sea-level rise—that can make climate change seem apocalyptic. Just read Jeff Goodell’s recent piece in Rolling Stone about what a major hurricane might be able to do to Miami after a few decades of warming.

A new study ( http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract?sid=9
fb226fc-6f82-4b7a-8c91-6ce889da1b1a) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, suggests that tropical cyclones are likely to become both stronger and more frequent as the climate continues to warm—especially in the western North Pacific, home to some of the most heavily populated cities on the planet. But the North Atlantic—meaning the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast—won’t be spared either. Bigger bullets, faster gun.

Kerry Emanuel's (an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the foremost experts on hurricanes and climate change) simulations found that the frequency of tropical cyclones will increase by 10 to 40% by 2100. And the intensity of those storms will increase by 45% by the end of the century, with storms that actually make landfall—the ones that tend to smash—will increase by 55%.

Emanuel is a very well-respected climatologist, but it always takes more than a single study to overturn existing scientific opinion. We’ll see in the decades to come whether Emanuel is right. But in a way, it may not matter all that much. As Sandy showed, hurricanes already pose a tremendous threat to our coastal cities. And that threat will continue to grow no matter what climate change does to tropical storm frequency or intensity because we’re putting more and more people and property along the water’s edge. Whatever climate change does to hurricanes, we need to be ready. More at http://science.time.com/2013/07/09/a-new-study-says-hurricanes-will-ge
t-stronger-and-more-frequent-thanks-to-climate-change/

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