Comments on "Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years" by Kerry Emanuel, Nature, 31 July 2005, Vol. 436, pp. 686-688

Abstract

The near universal references to the above paper by most of the major US media outlets and blogs since Katrina and Rita made US landfall requires a response from a few of us who study hurricanes. Having been involved with hurricane research and forecasting for nearly 50 years, I feel I have an obligation to offer comments on this paper's findings which, in my view, are not valid. This paper concludes that global tropical cyclone net power dissipation (or friction times wind) taken to be proportional to the sum of each cyclone's individual 6-hour track period maximum wind speed (Vmax^3) has undergone large (more than doubled) increases over the last 30 years. The author associates these frictional energy dissipation increases with rising mean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and implies that these SST increases may, in part, be related to human activity. If true, this is a very important finding that has great relevance as regards to the globe's future climate and future hurricane destruction. But, the author's apparent "blockbuster" results and his interpretation of his calculations are not realistic.