New paper finds no evidence of climate change causing increase of tropical storms

A paper published online today in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that there is no evidence to suggest that 'climate change' is responsible for a reported increase in the frequency of short-duration tropical storms of the North Atlantic during the 20th century. The paper finds that an increase in reported storms is simply due to improved methods of detection (the "observing system") over the 20th century rather than any evidence of 'climate change.'



JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 116, D10114, 11 PP., 2011



Is the recorded increase in short-duration North Atlantic tropical storms spurious?



Gabriele Villarini, et al



The number of North Atlantic tropical storms lasting 2 days or less exhibits a large increase starting from the middle of the 20th century, driving the increase in recorded number of tropical storms over the past century. Here we present a set of quantitative analyses to assess whether this behavior is more likely associated with climate variability/change or with changes in observing systems. By using statistical methods combined with the current understanding of the physical processes, we are unable to find support for the hypothesis that the century-scale record of short-lived tropical cyclones in the Atlantic contains a detectable real climate signal. Therefore, we interpret the long-term secular increase in short-duration North Atlantic tropical storms as likely to be substantially inflated by observing system changes over time. These results strongly suggest that studies examining the frequency of North Atlantic tropical storms over the historical era (between the 19th century and present) should focus on storms of duration greater than about 2 days.