Is the number of hurricanes rising, or are we just getting better at counting them?
Courtesy NASA

The 2007 hurricane season ends today, and by most accounts it was fairly typical, with 14 named storms and 5 hurricanes. But Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, thinks those numbers are inflated. He argues that several of the named storms were not, in fact, strong enough to merit special designation.

According to the article, better storm-tracking technology has allowed scientists to identify and accurately measure weather events which, in years past, might not have merited “storm” designation, or might have been missed altogether.

Some people argue that this is an example of “climate change hype” – exaggerating the number of strong storms to make climate change look more severe than it actually is. Blogger Glenn Reynolds has perhaps a more charitable explanation: people in any profession want their field to seem important. If you’re in the hurricane business, then you get more attention – and more funding – if there are more hurricanes.

Earlier Buzz discussions of the 2007 Hurricane season can be found here and here.

All tags:

Tags : weather, global warming, natural disaster, hurricanes, climate, weather forecasting, climate change

How would you tag this story?

My tags:

A comma-separated list of terms describing this content. Example: funny, bungee jumping, "Company, Inc.".

• Email
• Delicious
• Digg
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo