Global warming and Katrina
Two global warming posts in a row! I’m hesitant to write about global warming again because people see the term and their eyes glaze over. Nonetheless, a fairly popular article from the Boston Globe has been spreading around the Internet, and I think it’s time someone called it out and said “No, you’re wrong.” The opening paragraph is as follows:
THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.
Right away you’re either running away screaming or nodding your head vigorously. The article makes some good points, but is overzealous in driving home the fact that global warming exists, and that it’s a real problem. I picture someone frothing at the mouth gnashing his teeth rather than a well thought-out discussion of the environmental factors that influenced Hurricane Katrina.
As I’ve written before, the hurricane cycle is an intricate dance of four cycles each within one another. Influences like El Nino and La Nina also play a small role in how severe a hurricane season can be. Remember that El Nino is the natural warming of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and that during this regular warming period, the hurricane season tends to be more mild.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
Blaming “global warming” for warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico is disingenuous and cheapens what global warming really does do. While warm waters can supercharge a floundering tropical storm — this is neither rare nor earthshattering — even if the Gulf of Mexico was warmer than usual, this would likely have a calming effect on the hurricane season as a whole, as evidenced when El Nino is in effect. Acutely, warmer waters do have the ability to charge a hurricane that might happen to form (such as Katrina), but I have read no reports of the Gulf of Mexico being warmer this year than in recent years past. Even if the Gulf was warmer, any temperature difference would likely be miniscule (in the short run) and would have had a negligible effect on charging a storm more this year as compared to last.
Blaming “global warming” for something like Katrina is foolish, because it was only a matter of time before a hurricane like Katrina came along and did Louisiana in — global warming or no. Such is the price to be paid for a poorly-designed city in a hurricane-prone area: witness this transcript from a PBS program which aired back in 2002 which explained exactly what would happen if a strong hurricane were to strike New Orleans. It’s eery how accurate the prediction was.
If Katrina had hit in 1925, the effect would have been as devastating then as it was today. Perhaps even moreso. But alluding to the idea that Katrina wouldn’t have happened in 1925 because global warming wasn’t as bad is absurd.
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Where’s the link for the PBS transcript?
Comment by chip — September 13, 2005 @ 12:57 pm
Gah! Thanks for the heads-up; it’s there now.
Comment by Rian — September 13, 2005 @ 11:58 pm
Its completely unrelated, but clicking on the xHTML valid link at the bottom comes up with three errors, none of which are major. Just FYI.
Comment by Eric — September 14, 2005 @ 12:33 am
[...] Many news sources are disagreeing with my earlier post on the effect of global warming on hurricanes. Overall, it seems, global warming is at least increasing the intensity of hurricanes. There have been more Category 4 and 5 storms over the last 35 years outside of the normal waxing and waning of the normal hurricane cycles. I stand by what I said, though, regarding the assertion that global warming is solely to blame for the destruction of New Orleans and the Mississippi delta: it was bound to happen eventually. [...]
Pingback by polyscience.org » Global warming and mitigating a hurricane — September 15, 2005 @ 4:55 pm