Are Category 4 and 5 hurricanes increasing in number?

[phantom power]

The arguments against sea surface temperature (SST) increases linked to increasing hurricane strength are (below) that the measured temperature increases just don't account for enough increase in energy.

It caused me to wonder: what if the effects of SST are being looked at the wrong way? Maybe it's more clarifying to say that lower SST acts as a brake on storm development, and that as temps rise, that brake goes away. It would be related to the "deep vortex" theory that has been proposed to explain the rapid intensifications we say this year. Increasing frequency of storms, and cat-4-plus storms, are happening not because of the increase in heat energy at the ocean surface, but because the ocean surface is passing some critical point, where it fails to act as a brake on storm development. The resulting storm is out of proportion to the relatively small heat increase from the ocean surface.

In September 2005, a paper published in Science magazine reported that worldwide, the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes had increased 80% in the past 30 years. The paper, (Webster et al., 2005), titled "Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment", linked the rise in storms to increasing sea surface temperatures and concluded that "global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes." The authors, led by Dr. Peter Webster of Georgia Tech and Dr. Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, argued that this was consistent with climate models that have predicted a future increase in frequency of the most intense hurricanes due to human-emitted greenhouse gases. This paper, along with another paper published in August, "Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones over the past 30 years", by Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT, showing an increase in hurricane power and longevity in recent years, created a huge stir in the media. However, there is a large amount of uncertainty in the hurricane intensity data used by both papers, and their findings should be considered as preliminary evidence that the global incidence of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes may be increasing. There are good reasons to believe that the actual increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes is far lower than the 80% increase found by Webster et al.

(...)

The theoretical basis for connecting hurricane intensity and global warming
Hurricanes act as giant heat engines, so it is logical to assume that an increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) will make more intense hurricanes. Indeed, there is a general consensus among hurricane scientists that an increase in SSTs due to global warming, should, in theory, lead to more intense hurricanes. Theory predicts that hurricane wind speeds should increase about 5% for every 1 degree Centigrade increase in tropical ocean temperature (Emanuel, 1987). Computer models confirm this tendency, but assign a slightly smaller magnitude to the increase (Knutson and Tuleya, 2004). Given the expected 1.5° to 4.5° C warming of Earth's climate expected by 2100, theory predicts a gradually increasing frequency of Category 4 and 5 storms.

Global warming in the past century has increased ocean temperatures about 1°F (0.5°C) which should correspond at most to about a 2.5% increase in hurricane wind speeds. If this theory is correct, an upper-end Category 3 hurricane with wind speeds of 130 mph--like Hurricane Katrina at landfall--owes 2-3 mph of its sustained winds to global warming. Hurricane wind speeds are estimated to the nearest 5 knots (5.8 mph), and one can get a general idea of what percent increase we've seen in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes due to global warming by looking at the number of high end Category 3 hurricanes (winds of 130 mph) and low end Category 4 hurricanes (135 mph winds). If we assume a 2-3 mph increase in winds of these storms is due to global warming over the past 35 years, one would expect to see a 5% increase at most in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. An increase this small is not detectable given the current accuracy of estimating hurricane winds, and the relatively few number of of these storms that occur each year. This expected maximum 5% increase is quite a disagreement with the 80% increase found by Webster et al.! So, either the measurements are wrong, or the theory is wrong--or a combination of the two. I believe it may well be a combination of the two. The fact that the originator of the intensity theory (Kerry Emanuel) is one of the scientists who is advocating that the theory may be in error, is reason enough to doubt the theory. The formation and intensification of hurricanes are not well understood, and it would be no surprise if major revisions to intensity theory are made in the future. However, such a wide difference between the theory and the reported trends should make us suspicious of the observed data, as well.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=327&tstamp=200603