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Guru of hurricanes sees 15 tropical storms this year

The expert meteorologist Walter Gray split with climate change the annual rise in the number of tropical storms

( Image: Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 )

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Does this year will be another Katrina? Will it a hurricane over Cuba? It is too early to provide answers, but the expert from Colorado State University William Gray, known for his 77 years as the guru of hurricane has already begun to draw the profiles of this year in the Atlantic basin.

For Gray, who yesterday filed a report with its forecasts, this season, which officially begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30 , recorded a higher activity than normal, ie above the average of the last 58 years.

Specifically, the expert predicted that 15 tropical storms formed, of which eight will reach hurricane strength and four, that of major hurricane (winds above 209 km / h). Their forecasts also raise the 95% probability of a hurricane impacting against the U.S., although there are only 69% of options that are in force 3, 4 or 5.

The best news for people in the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Honduras, as well as thousands of tourists who will travel there this year, is that the forecasts away from the nightmare of the 2005 season, when there were 28 tropical storms. Names such as Katrina, Wilma and Rita will be remembered for a long time for the tragedies they caused. The truth is that while the last two years have been much calmer, the number of tropical storms increases each season on average since 1950.

For Gray, the cause of this increased activity is not climate change but accelerating the circulation of water in the Atlantic Ocean, which strengthened from 1995 onwards. This phenomenon is cyclical and its duration is extended, in his view, for one or two more decades. As you slow down, there will come a period of reduced activity, as occurred between 1970 and 1994 and between 1901 and 1925.

For the specialist, even the arrival of Tropical Storm Vince to the Iberian Peninsula in 2005, a phenomenon not seen ever before, is part of the Earth's climate variability.

conclusions to these conclusions Gray CONTRATODO clash directly with other scientific studies that do establish a direct link between rising temperatures and sea surface formation and intensity of hurricanes . These theories are, for example, reflecting Al Gore is his controversial film An Inconvenient Truth.

Whatever the right theory, the specialist will continue to make its forecasts with a basic principle: the atmosphere will behave in the future as it did in the past. Thus, the past years to present conditions similar to those of 2008 set the standard of behavior in the coming months.

The temperature of the sea surface, the moisture in the atmosphere and the phenomena of El Niño or La Niña up the ingredients needed to draw conclusions. In fact, the persistence of La Niña this year weakened the formation of tropical cyclones over the Atlantic.

Both Gray and his student, Phil Klotzbach, who has already received the baton as head of the forecast, when you know that Arthur, the first tropical storm of the Atlantic season , their forecasts will again be tested.