Les Hatton

1946-2010: Worldwide Hurricane Activity

*** News update ***, 18 Nov 2011. I see the BBC reported that the IPCC have now changed their mind (again) to say "It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either DEcrease or remain essentially unchanged." I assume this change of heart is because anybody can tell by looking at the openly available data shown on this site or a number of similar ones, that their previous view that the global frequency was INcreasing is manifestly not supported by these data.

What really troubles me about the IPCC is that this kind of politically slanted press conference focused science reporting gives science and scientists a bad name and reduces credibility at a time when we really need to know what is happening and to be able to communicate that in a credible fashion. The IPCC is no longer fit for this purpose in my opinion.

The following is an update of the paper I wrote a year ago showing that Hurricane Data did not support the widely advertised view by the IPCC that hurricanes are getting stronger. The conclusions haven't changed.

Here I update to the period 1946-2010. The previous conclusions are unchanged with 2010 being a particularly quiet year continuing an apparent decline in activity. World-wide, the data shows a distinct convex upwards trend with an approximate half-period of around 35 years and a peak of activity in the mid-1990s. Its really interesting and if this is indicative of the IPCC's quoted recent rising trend, I clearly need to change my optician.

The data is taken directly from the Unisys site shown below. All I have done is graph various bits of it so my grateful thanks to them.

In the interests of open pedagogic research, I have also included a link below to the updated spreadsheet so you can plot and analyse it yourselves.

http://www.leshatton.org/Documents/Data_Hurricanes_1946-2010.zip

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/