Spin doctors: Scientists debate climate change hurricane link

— -- Do greenhouse gases help fuel hurricanes, spawning growing legions of stronger storms?

Or is this notion strictly hot air?

Friday, two of the nation's leading climate scientists traded opposing opinions during a cordial debate on global warming and hurricanes. The dueling discussion highlighted the closing day of the Florida Governor's Hurricane Conference in Fort Lauderdale.

The participants were Kerry Emanuel, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor who links global warming with increased Atlantic hurricanes, and Chris Landsea, a National Hurricane Center researcher who disputes this connection.

Both scientists use the same historical climate statistics and computer models — but they interpret this data in markedly different fashion.

On one side: Emanuel argues that Atlantic hurricanes are increasing in frequency and power, probably as a result of global warming. One of Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2006, his theories gained public recognition in the wake of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

"There is evidence from several independent techniques that (hurricane) power dissipation has gone up the last 25 years. Very substantially so in the Atlantic — almost a factor of three in the past 25 years," he said.

However, on a global scale, Emanuel said no such upswing in number of hurricanes is apparent. He also said that computer projections yield "mixed results" on future effects of global warming on hurricane activity.

Landsea acknowledged that greenhouse gases may be the major reason that sea-surface temperatures — the engine that drives hurricanes — have warmed during the last few decades.

But he disputed the accuracy of the historical data Emanuel used to chart some of his projected trends. Calling hurricane-monitoring techniques "unreliable, primitive and crude" for much of the past century, Landsea said the NHC did not even issue advisories for all weak, short-lived storms as late as the early 1990s.