Benfield research quantifies influence of sea surface temperatures on hurricane activity

Scientists at the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre (BUHRC) have for the first time quantified the extent to which sea surface warming contributes to increased Atlantic hurricane activity.In a study published in the scientific journal Nature, professor Mark Saunders and Dr Adam Lea have found the current sensitivity of tropical Atlantic hurricane activity to sea surface warming is large, with a 0.5C change in sea surface temperature being associated with a 40% change in hurricane activity and frequency.They also found local sea surface warming was responsible for about 40% of the increase in Atlantic hurricane activity (relative to the 1950-2000 average) between 1996 and 2005. Their research focused on storms that form in the tropical regions of the North Atlantic, accounting for between 85% and 90% of the hurricanes that make landfall in the United States. Saunders is the head of BUHRC’s weather and climate extremes section. “We used a statistical model based on two environmental variables local sea-surface temperature and an atmospheric wind field which replicated 75-80% of the variance in tropical Atlantic hurricane activity between 1965 and 2005,” he said in a press release announcing the publication of the study. “By removing the influence of the winds from the model, we were able to assess the contribution of sea surface temperature and found that it has a large effect”This research is important for helping to resolve the vexed issue of how climate change will impact hurricane frequency and activity. Our analysis does not attempt to identify whether greenhouse gas-induced warming contributed to the increase in water temperature. “But it is important that climate models are able to reproduce the observed relationship between hurricane activity and sea surface temperature, so improving their reliability to model how hurricane activity will be affected by climate change.”