Real Science

Counting Cyclones

Advertisements

Chris Landsea at the National Hurricane Center wrote an excellent piece a few years ago, explaining why they name more storms than they used to.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea-eos-may012007.pdf

It basically comes down to better monitoring techniques. With satellites, they find more storms in the mid-Atlantic.

More storms are named now :

But a smaller percentage of the named storms make landfall.

This is due to two factors. Fewer hurricanes are making landfall, and more hurricanes are found now far from land. All hurricanes are shown in blue, and major hurricanes are shown in red in the graph below.

Conclusion : There is no valid reason to believe that any type of Atlantic storms have become more common.

Advertisements

Advertisements