More or less hurricanes?

More hurricanes? Less hurricanes? What's going on eh?

Harbingers of increased Atlantic hurricane activity identified

Reconstructions of past hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean indicate that the most active hurricane period in the past was during the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" about a thousand years ago when climate conditions created a "perfect storm" of La Niña-like conditions combined with warm tropical Atlantic waters.

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"We are at levels now that are about as high as anything we have seen in the past 1,000 years," said Mann.

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"It seems that the paleodata support the contention that greenhouse warming may increase the frequency of Atlantic tropical storms," said Mann. "It may not be just that the storms are stronger, but that there are there may be more of them as well."

But not all agree. And Guru Wattsy seems even more mystified because Mann refers to the MWP - and the Guru and his disciples have been telling us for years that Mann deliberately tried to remove the MWP with his 'hockey stick' temperature reconstruction! Of course, Mann did no such thing and Watts now finds himself just a little embarassed!

Meanwhile, to confuse things further, Chris Landsea has led an NOAA team that have found that

The recent jump in the number of short-lived systems is likely a consequence of improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques

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According to Dr. Brian Soden, a professor at the University of Miami’s Rosentiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, “The study provides strong evidence that there has been no systematic change in the number of north Atlantic tropical cyclones during the 20th century.”

These findings do not necessarily contradict each other - though it may mean that Mann etal have under-estimated the number of smaller hurricanes which did not make landfall. Either way, we may surmise from these 2 studies that there is some evidence to suggest that whilst the number of hurricanes on average does not greatly change, warmer seas may result in a greater frequency of larger, more intense ones - as seems to have been the case 1,000 years ago.

And no ad homs, non sequiturs or straw men needed.