Atlantic warming will bring worse storms Hurricanes striking the Caribbean and the east coast of North America are likely to be less frequent but more intense over the coming century, if temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean continue to rise. That is according to researchers in the US who have merged long-term climate projections with a popular weather-forecasting model. The scientists took data based on the average of 18 global models that contributed to the latest scientific report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They then fed these data into the GDFL hurricane model, which is used by, among others, the US Navy to predict storm activity. The results predict nearly a doubling of category 4 or 5 hurricanes – the highest grades – by the end of the 21st century if ocean temperatures continue to rise at the current rate (Science 22 454).
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