by
After Hurricane Ian: No Trend in Florida Landfalls, Global Activity Trending Down
September 29th, 2022
Hurricane Ian approaches SW Florida on 28 September 2022.
With Hurricane Ian (now a tropical storm) exiting the east coast of Florida, there is no shortage of news reports tying this storm to climate change. Even if those claims actually include data to support their case, those data are usually for cherry-picked regions and time periods. If global warming is causing a change in tropical cyclone activity, it should show up in global statistics.
The latest peer-reviewed study (March 2022, here) of the accumulated wind energy in tropical cyclones since 1990 (when we started have sufficient global data) showed a decrease in hurricane activity. There was an increase in Atlantic activity, but this was matched by an even larger decrease in Pacific activity, due to a shift from El Nino to La Nina conditions during that time.
So, yes, there is climate change involved in the uptick in Atlantic activity in recent decades. But it’s natural.
Looking at just the numbers of global hurricanes since 1980, we see no obvious trends.
Global hurricane activity counts by year during 1980-2021.
Even if we did see an increase, the improvements in global satellite monitoring would be responsible for some of that. It is impossible to talk about meaningful global statistics (especially trends) before the 1980s due to a lack of satellite data. Ships of opportunity are insufficient for trend calculations, especially since ships try to avoid storms, not sample them.
A document-based study of hurricanes impacting the Lesser Antilles since the late 1600s found a downward trend (not statistically significant) in hurricane activity during 1690-2007.
In my 2017 Kindle book Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed on Global Warming, I looked at major hurricane landfalls in Florida, which showed no trends. With Hurricane Ian and Michael (2018) added to the dataset, there is still no statistically significant trends in either intensity or frequency of landfalling major hurricanes in Florida.
Major hurricane landfalls in Florida over the last 120 years.
Of course hurricane damages have increased dramatically during the same period, but this is due to the explosive growth in coastal infrastructure there. Miami had only 444 residents in 1896, and now the metro area has over 6,000,000 population. As seen in the following plot, Florida population has increased by a factor of over 40 since 1900.
Yearly population of Florida, 1900 through 2021.
Given that hurricanes will always be with us, what is the best defense against them? Wealth. Hurricane Ian came ashore with 150 mph sustained winds, but warnings from modern instrumentation and forecast tools led to mass evacuations. At this writing, only 5 deaths have been reported (I’m sure that will rise). Modern building codes help reduce wind damage. I watched storm chaser Reed Timmer live reporting from the eyewall of Hurricane Ian as it made landfall, and I didn’t see any roofs coming off the houses (but I’m sure there were some that did). Damage from storm surge flooding, however, will be extensive and costly.
This is a fantastic site, would you be interested in doing an interview regarding just how you designed it? If so e-mail me!
Wonderful blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Thank you
Great write-up, I?m regular visitor of one?s web site, maintain up the excellent operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy time.
Hmm is anyone else having problems with the pictures on this blog loading? I’m trying to find out if its a problem on my end or if it’s the blog. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
bdk wheel covers review
Hey very cool site!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I’ll bookmark your site and take the feeds also?I’m happy to find numerous useful information here in the post, we need work out more strategies in this regard, thanks for sharing. . . . . .
hello!,I really like your writing very so much! share we keep in touch extra approximately your post on AOL? I need a specialist in this area to resolve my problem. May be that’s you! Having a look forward to peer you.
I’m not sure why but this site is loading extremely slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a issue on my end? I’ll check back later on and see if the problem still exists.
“Lightweight luggage”
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
Thanks for the different tips shared on this site. I have realized that many insurance agencies offer buyers generous reductions if they favor to insure several cars together. A significant quantity of households own several cars or trucks these days, in particular those with older teenage youngsters still residing at home, as well as the savings with policies can easily soon increase. So it will pay to look for a good deal.
Hello, Neat post. There is an issue together with your website in internet explorer, may check this? IE still is the market chief and a large portion of people will leave out your excellent writing because of this problem.
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
Thank you for sharing indeed great looking !
Thanks for any other fantastic post. The place else may just anybody get that type of info in such an ideal means of writing? I’ve a presentation subsequent week, and I am at the look for such information.
I am really enjoying the theme/design of your weblog. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A couple of my blog readers have complained about my site not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome. Do you have any suggestions to help fix this issue?
Thanks for another informative blog. Where else could I get that kind of information written in such an ideal way? I’ve a project that I’m just now working on, and I’ve been on the look out for such info.