Year: 2008

Bloomberg news service (U.S.)   January 23, 2008

Warming Oceans May Cut Atlantic Hurricane Landfalls in U.S.
By Alex Morales

<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=amCO_OOjtvPg&refer=latin_america#>

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — The warming of the world’s oceans may reduce the number of Atlantic hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S., government researchers found.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed Atlantic storms from 1854 to 2006. They found that higher ocean temperatures increase the vertical wind shear of a system, or the rate at which wind speeds vary with altitude, NOAA said in a statement on its Web site. That, in turn, correlated with a decrease in the number of storms that strike land.

“We found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. land-falling hurricanes when the global ocean is warmed up,” Chunzai Wang, an oceanographer at the center, said in the statement. “This trend coincides with an increase in vertical wind shear over the tropical North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.”

The study, which appears today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, may influence future predictions of how global warming will affect the U.S.  Scientists with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year that rising temperatures will cause storms to intensify. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, caused more than $41.1 billion in insured damage.

The NOAA scientists found that warmer waters in the Pacific and Indian oceans help to increase vertical shear in Atlantic hurricanes, suppressing their activity and reducing the number of land-falling storms.

Last Updated: January 23, 2008 07:46 EST

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“It’s turning conservation on its head,” said Bill Stanley, who directs the
global climate change initiative at the Nature Conservancy. He said the
organization has a goal to protect 10 percent of major habitat types –
like grasslands, forests and freshwater systems – by 2015.”
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The New York Times
January 29, 2008

The Preservation Predicament
By CORNELIA DEAN

Conservation organizations that work to preserve
biologically rich landscapes are confronting a
painful realization: In an era of climate change,
many of their efforts may be insufficient or
beside the point.

Some scientists say efforts to re-establish or
maintain salmon runs in Pacific Northwest streams
will be of limited long-term benefit to the fish
if warming makes the streams inhospitable. Others
worry about efforts to restore the fresh water
flow of the Everglades, given that much of it
will be under water as sea level rises. Some
geologists say it may be advisable to abandon
efforts to preserve some fragile coastal barrier
islands and focus instead on allowing coastal
marshes to migrate inland, as sea level rises.

And everywhere, ecologists and conservation
biologists wonder how landscapes already under
preservation will change with the climate.

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