Climate Change Will Cause Stronger, More Frequent Hurricanes: Study

From Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Sandy, Americans across the nation have experienced just how catastrophic Mother Nature's largest and most destructive storms can be. However, things may only get worse. A new study suggests that not only will hurricanes and tropical storms intensify during this century, but that they will occur more frequently due to climate change. 

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by MIT climate/hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel, the study predicts that the world could see as many as 20 additional hurricanes and tropical storms each year by the end of the century, reports the Huffington Post. We currently get about 90 storms around the globe each year.

Contrary to previous findings, Emanuel's research reveals that tropical cyclones are likely to become both stronger and more frequent in the years to come, especially in the western North Pacific. "Tropical cyclone" is an umbrella term that includes hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones (they are all the same type of storm, however, they're labeled differently depending where they form.)

Emanuel's study used six newly upgraded global climate computer models to simulate future hurricane activity around the world. His study found that these killer storms will not only increase in intensity during the 21st century, as many previous studies had predicted, but that they will also increase in frequency in most locations.

"Our study suggests that the largest increases might occur in the western North Pacific region, but with noticeable increases in the South Indian Ocean and in the North Atlantic region," he said, according to HattiesburgAmerican.com.  

However, researcher Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, who was not part of the PNAS study, says his own research, along with Emanuel's other work, suggests that the ability to detect any sign of human-caused climate change on the impacts of hurricanes on society will take many decades; maybe even centuries.