Report: Don't blame storms on warming

Global warming by itself cannot be blamed for the increase in severe Atlantic hurricanes, University of Virginia climate researchers report.

"It is too simplistic to only implicate sea-surface temperatures in the dramatic increase in the number of major hurricanes," said the study's lead author, Patrick J. Michaels.

Warm water fuels tropical cyclones. Some hurricane researchers have related warming in the Atlantic basin with greater hurricane severity, pointing to greenhouse-induced atmosphere warming as the cause for the ocean heating.

But hurricanes' ultimate strength is not directly linked to the underlying water temperatures, the Virginia scientists said.

"There are more severe hurricanes appearing than are explainable by the rise in sea-surface temperatures since the 1990s," said Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences and director of the Virginia Climatology Office.

Michaels is a leading skeptic of global warming's potential harm.

To fire off monster hurricanes of Category 3 or stronger, the brewing storm has to move over water with a temperature of at least 83 degrees.

Areas where the water is regularly hotter, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, won't see more intense storms than in the past, Michaels said.

"At that point, other factors take over," he said, "such as the vertical wind profile, and atmospheric temperature and moisture gradients."

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