Statement by Dr. Bill Chameides, Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense On President Bush

Earlier today, President Bush, while touring the National Hurricane Center, was told that there is “not a consensus” linking the powerful hurricanes of the past few years to global warming.

 

In fact, a number of papers have appeared in the literature over the past year showing a rapid rise in hurricane intensity over the past ~ 30 years and have correlated it with increasing sea surface temperatures and thus global warming.

 

Christopher Landsea, the scientist who briefed the President, has published a Perspectives piece in Science magazine arguing the hurricane date record is not accurate enough to determine a multi-decadal trend. This is somewhat surprising (and ironic) since Landsea had previously used this same database, and developed a procedure for analyzing the data that he now criticizes.

 

However, this issue from a public policy perspective has been made largely moot by the work of Trenberth and Shea, published in June, 2006 in Geophysical Research Letters. They showed that 50 percent of the extremely warm temperatures of the North Atlantic Ocean in the summer of 2005 that spawned the record-breaking 2005 hurricane season was caused by global warming. Thus, the most destructive hurricane season on record, which caused over $100 billion of damage in the U.S. and untold human suffering, has now been laid at the feet of global warming. As to the future of hurricane intensity, Trenberth and Shea conclude: “ … the global warming influence provides a new background level that increases the risk of future enhanced (hurricane) activity.”

 

At a time when the global warming problem is growing in urgency, it is critical that the President and chief executive of our country get the full story. Today, the information he received was, in fact, incomplete.