Christopher Landsea
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Christopher Landsea, formerly a research meteorologist with Hurricane Research Division of Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory at NOAA, is now the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. He earned his doctoral degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.
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[edit] Research
Dr. Landsea has published a number of research papers on cyclones and hurricanes. He is the author of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Tropical Cyclones: FAQ.[1] He also has been the lead scientist in the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis since 1997.
[edit] Stance about the influence of global warming on hurricane winds
In January, 2005, Landsea withdrew from his participation in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Landsea claimed the IPCC had become politicized and the leadership ignored his concerns.[2] Landsea does not believe that global warming has a strong influence on hurricanes: "global warming might be enhancing hurricane winds, but only by 1 percent or 2 percent". He strongly questions the accuracy of the historical global hurricane database for comparisons with current observations, citing an uncounted, catastrophic 1970 storm as an example.[3] After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Republican administrators preferred Landsea over other scientists in NOAA to speak to the media about the link between hurricanes and climate change.[4]
The now published SPM AR4 IPCC report doesn't specify the amount of enhancement in hurricane winds, and thus doesn't contradict Landsea's numbers.
Roger A. Pielke (Jr), who originally published Landsea's letter, expressed his opinion that the actual IPCC report "maintain[s] consistency with the actual balance of opinion(s) in the community of relevant experts."[5]
[edit] Global Warming and Hurricanes
In an interview on PBS, Christopher Landsea said "we certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades on the order of a degree Fahrenheit, and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming. The question is whether we're seeing any real increases in the hurricane activity." He went on to say "with the Atlantic hurricanes in particular, they're due to changes both in the ocean as well as the atmosphere. Just changing the ocean where it's a little bit warmer isn't sufficient. " As for climate change affecting Hurricane strength, Landsea said that global warming theories and numerical modeling suggest only that "hurricanes like Katrina and Rita may have been stronger due to global warming but maybe by one or two miles per hour." [6]
[edit] See Also
[edit] References
- ^ Hurricanes, Typhoons, Tropical Cyclones FAQ, NOAA.
- ^ Chris Landsea Leaves, Colorado University.
- ^ Miami Herald.
- ^ NOAA by Salon, 2006-09-19.
- ^ [1]
- ^ PBS, 2005.
