New Landsea Paper in EOS

May 3rd, 2007

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Chris Landsea has shared his just-out paper from EOS (PDF) and send the following capsule summary:

The link between the frequency of tropical cyclones [hurricanes and tropical storms] and anthropogenic global warming has become an emerging focus. However, an analysis of the data shows that improved monitoring in recent years is responsible for most, if not all, of the observed trend in increasing frequency of tropical cyclones.

Comments, criticisms, alternative perspectives welcomed!

One Response to “New Landsea Paper in EOS”

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  1. Rich Horton Says:

    I should have checked here first. I just sent him an email an hour ago asking if this was going to be made available.

    It is nice to see his results are quite close to what I found when I looked at this question back in February. http://iconicmidwest.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-have-i-been-doing.html

    Landsea states: Assuming that a similar long-term average of about 59% of tropical cyclones actually struck land during 1900–1965, this increases the record by 2.2 additional tropical
    cyclones per year for this earlier era.

    I found for the years 1907-1966: If we look at the minimum (14.44%) and maximum (24.53%) values as defining a range for the pre-satellite number (which today sits at 40 Mid-Atlantic storms out of 495 total storms, or 8.08%,) we are left with a range of an additional 1.28 to 2.46 storms per year. That would mean a difference for the sixty year period of plus 77 to 148 storms.

    Sounds good to me. :-)

    However, Landsea’s graphs are prettier than mine.