The Chronicle

Issue date: 9/24/08 Section: News
Last update: 9/24/08 at 6:46 AM EST

Media Credit: graphic by Hon Chu

The effects of global warming might blow your mind-literally.

When Hurricane Ike hit the coast of Houston two Fridays ago, pictures of the flooded city only served as vivid reminders of what happened three years ago in New Orleans.

Causing more than 50 deaths in the U.S., Hurricane Ike is the deadliest hurricane so far in this year's hurricane season, which technically ends Nov. 31. Ike is already the third costliest U.S. hurricane in history, behind Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Ike reignited the debate on the link between global warming and the increased hurricane activity.

Robert Walko, research scientist of civil engineering at the Pratt School of Engineering, said warm water is the source of energy for hurricanes. Increased sea-surface temperature causes more energy to be available at the ocean's surface, allowing hurricanes to reach higher intensity. Walko, however, called such reasoning about global warming "simple-minded."

"There are a number of other things that could also contribute to the weakening of hurricanes under global warming," he said.

Most of today's predictions about global warming and hurricane forecasting are done with computer modeling, and Alex Robel, a junior who has done research on hurricanes over the last five summers, said the models are producing inconclusive results.

"About half of them say [the hurricane activity] will increase, about half say it will decrease," he said. Robel added that the model that he helped developed this past summer found that some basins would have increased activity, and some would have less.

Although the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons are considered the most intense in historical records, the evidence is not strong enough to blame global warming for the cause. Other scientists, however, said global warming does have an effect on the intensity of hurricanes.

David Enfield, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said although global warming causes the environment to be less favorable for development of hurricanes in general, the maximum potential internal energy of each hurricane is greater.

"This means that there will be fewer storms all together, but there will be more of the strong ones proportionally," Enfield said.

Perhaps the most important issue at hand is not determining this link, but preparedness for the intense storms, Robel said.

Willis said although deaths can largely be avoided, some of the damages from hurricanes are unavoidable.

"Apathy was a problem in South Florida until [Hurricane] Andrew, and probably in New Orleans until [Hurricane] Katrina."

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