Area Where Hurricanes Develop Is Warmer, Say NOAA Scientists

Area Where Hurricanes Develop Is Warmer, Say NOAA Scientists: "The region of the tropical Atlantic where many hurricanes originate has warmed by several tenths of a degree Celsius over the 20th century, and new climate model simulations suggest that human activity, such as increasing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, may contribute significantly to this warming. This new finding is one of several conclusions reported in a study by scientists at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., published in the Journal of Climate. 'This very long-term increase in temperature may seem small but is comparable in magnitude to shorter time-scale, multi-decadal changes that many scientists now believe contribute strongly to an increase in hurricane activity in the Atlantic,' said Thomas Knutson, lead author of the paper and a senior research meteorologist at GFDL."