Since 1945, the number of hurricanes that make landfall has declined by about a third
Roger Pielke 2/2
Last week a paper published in Science concluded that worldwide, “To date, there has been no firm evidence of global trends of the frequency of tropical cyclones with maximum wind speed above the hurricane-force wind (64 knots) at landfall.” That finding, which confirms our work, was based on data since 1982. But what happens when we take a look further back in time? What we find might surprise you.
The North Atlantic and Western Pacific basins together accounted for about 70% of global landfalls, and the combined record of landfalls goes back (at least) to 1945 in both basins. The figure below shows combined landfalls in these two basins from 1945 to 2020, spanning 76 years.
With a longer-term view from the two ocean basins that see about 70% of all landfalls, we see that variability in landfalling hurricanes has been much larger than observed over the past 40 or 50 years. In fact, the overall number of landfalling hurricanes has decreased dramatically since the 1940s, while the number of major hurricane landfalls has shown no trend. This will likely be counter-intuitive to many.
Because of their fearsome destructive potential, it is also no surprise that hurricanes have become a central symbol in policy advocacy related to climate change.
For instance, just last week John Kerry, President Biden’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, explained that the economic damage associated with hurricanes could be reduced via climate policies: “There are countless economic analyses now that show that it is now cheaper to deal with the crisis of climate than it is to ignore it. We spent $265 billion, two years ago, on three — three storms: Irma, Harvey, and Maria.”
Yet another alarmist climate change claim has been shown to be of doubtful veracity when a true analysis is made.
It is sad to see someone as science ignorant and alarmist as John Kerry heading up Climate change in the US.
