Les Hatton

1999-2009: Has the intensity and frequency of hurricanes increased ?

25-02-2010. Vindicated :-) A new WMO report concludes “. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.” Odd wording though. You could equally well say “. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify alien lifeforms in Bradford.”

18-02-2010. Added hemispheric plots and a worldwide plot for completeness. The worldwide plot is very interesting and puts the record North Atlantic year of 2005 into a global context where it doesn't really stand out. These data also added to the zip archive so anybody can analyse and plot them.

16-02-2010: The .xls file and the paper didn't match. Fixed with apologies. I also took the opportunity to try out some robustness checks and restructured the .xls file which was a complete mess so people can work with it more easily.

15-02-2010: This is an updated version. My conclusions are essentially unchanged but I expanded the analysis to be worldwide (rather than just the northern hemisphere), and plotted all the raw data, which is really interesting. I have also packaged it all up for free download to allow interested parties to repeat the analysis and re-produce all the plots.

The IPCC 2007 conclusions are still inconsistent with the datasets I used here and I hope that with the Himalayan glacier debacle, the apparently eccentric data handling of HADCRUT and papers like this, we will have a more open debate.

02-02-2010: Like many other trained scientists, I was deeply rattled by the leaked accusations of data and other fiddling at the CRU (Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia), host to one of the most important datasets used for Climate Change policy, HADCRUT.

As a result of this and other erratic statements on the subject, the attached is my analysis of hurricane frequency and intensity from publicly available data from NOAA and other sources. The point of this was to check the IPCC 2007 claims that hurricane frequency and intensity are increasing in recent times and its one of the few datasets which are genuinely available to the public at large. I found that there is no significant evidence supporting the IPCC 2007 claims and their conclusions are in my view woefully at odds with these data. Maybe they have their own private data.

Before sending me hate-mail if you are a warmist or love-mail if you are a coolist or denialist or whatever the parlance is this week, I am neither. I am a scientist and trained to be sceptical. To make it easier than the CRU have made it, the data is readily accessible at the link below. Go check it yourself. I'm damned if I know how the IPCC came to the conclusions it did.

For something this important, all the software and models and all the data should be publicly available in easily accessed form to allow anybody to contribute. Anything less is insane.

http://www.leshatton.org/Documents/Data_Hurricanes_1946-2009.zip