Global Warming and Hurricanes: All Hot Air?

[Orstio]

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Last year was the most destructive hurricane season in history and this year forecasters are expecting at least 9 hurricanes, with 5 of them being major ones. With these recent years being such active hurricane seasons, why does it seem like the U.S. is getting hammered by such horrific storms?

[TD bgColor=#336699][FONT color=#ffffff][STRONG][EM]With these recent years being such active hurricane seasons, why does it seem like the U.S. is getting hammered by such horrific storms? Some scientists say it's part of a naturally occurring cycle while others have made the claim global warming is to blame.[/EM][/STRONG][/FONT]

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[P]Some scientists say it's part of a naturally occurrin. . .

[Astronuc]

Or it's part of a natural cycle that is/will be exacerbated by the trend in global warming.  If there is more energy in the atmosphere, then there will be more violent storms.

One to the problem is the great reduction in forests in the Eastern US compare to 100 or 120 or 200 years ago.  Those forests mitigated some of the rainfall associated with hurricanes and major storms.  Now heavy rains result in flooding, which in itself is not a problem, except for the fact that people tend to live (build houses) and travel in areas prone to flooding.

[Astronuc]

The other extreme of GW might be 'Drought'!  Without cool air, and with microfine dust, moisture in the atmosphere just doesn't condense.

A potential consequence -

Dakotas at 'Epicenter' of Nation's Drought
By JAMES MacPHERSON

STEELE, N.D. (AP, July 29) - Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta, bread or beer. What is left of the stifled crops has been salvaged to feed livestock struggling on pastures where hot winds blow clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.

Some ranchers have been forced to sell their entire herds, and others are either moving their cattle to greener pastures or buying more already-costly feed. Hundreds of acres of grasslands have been blackened by fires sparked by lightning or farm equipment.

"These 100-degree days for weeks steady have been burning everything up," said Walter Johnson, Steele's mayor. "I'd go for 2 feet of snow than this."

Farm ponds and other small bodies of water have dried out from the heat, leaving the residual alkali dust to be whipped up by the wind. The blowing, dirt-and-salt mixture is a phenomenon that hasn't been seen in south central North Dakota since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Johnson said.

More than 60 percent of the United States now has abnormally dry or drought conditions, stretching from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist for the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.