Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit the United States. It is believed to have caused the death of 1,500 people and damage of $80 billion.

Storm activity and rising sea surface temperatures, are known to feed hurricanes. No wonder then, that a new study indicates a link between global warming and the frequency of hurricanes especially since the number of hurricanes that strike each year has more than doubled over the past century.

The new study, published online in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, said the increased numbers of tropical storms and hurricanes in the last 100 years is closely related to a 1.3-degree Fahrenheit rise in sea surface temperatures. The researchers found that average hurricane numbers jumped sharply during the 20th century, from 3.5 per year in the first 30 years to 8.4 in the earliest years of the 21st century.

Over that time, Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures increased .65 degrees, which experts call a significant increase. Changes in sea surface temperatures occurred before the periods of increased cyclones, with a rise of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit before the 1930 period and a similar increase before the 1995 period

Greg Holland, director of the research center in Boulder, Colorado, and co-author of the study, said:

These numbers are a strong indication that climate change is a major factor in the increasing number of Atlantic hurricanes.

What are hurricanes?

Hurricanes are so-called tropical cyclones, characterized by a circular wind pattern fed by warm ocean waters. Tropical storms become hurricanes when their winds reach 74 miles per hour and are categorized as major hurricanes at 111 mph. Holland said the increased hurricanes since 1995 may be a transition to a period in which the number of killer storms could be higher than at any time in the past.

Skeptics say hurricane data from the early decades of the 20th century are not reliable because cyclones likely formed and died in mid-ocean, where no one knew they existed. Data that are more reliable became available in 1944 when researchers had airplane observations, and from 1970 when satellites came into use.

Growing concern about climate change has prompted at least five attempts in Congress to set limits on U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that can heat the atmosphere but with out many fruitful results. The record 2005 hurricane season and the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina helped change U.S. public opinion about global warming. Now this study further concludes that weather gods are angry because of man made global warming. Is it not high time then to accept, react and curb?

Source: Reuters