Another dog doesn't bark in the cyclone wars...

Eos is a good source for stuff that is new, interesting, and not quite ready for prime time. In the latest episode of RTFR, Anonymous quoted from the recent WMO Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change

1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.

Eli quoted more of the statement back. In any case, in the 28 November issue of EOS, come Wu, Yeung and Chang from Hong Kong to say

Trends in Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Intensity
An analysis of the tropical cyclone best track data from the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre Tokyo as well as that of the Hong Kong Observatory indicates that, in contrast to an earlier finding, there was no increase in western North Pacific category 4–5 typhoon activity between the two periods of 1977–1989 and 1990–2004.

They discuss how using different data sets (Joint Typhoon Warning Center - used by Webster, et al., Regional Specialized Meteorological Center - Tokyo, or the Hong Kong Observatory - Hong Kong) gives different answers. The JTWC data set shows a significant increase in cat 4/5 storms over the 1975-2004 time period the other two do not. Naturally, they like their own which is one of the nots.

(Having some trouble uploading the image with Blogger. I will add it later. Eli really recommends joining AGU, it impresses the opposite and same sex, makes your mom proud, lets you see the figure the Rabett is having trouble with and costs only $20 per year, for which you get paper and electron EOS subscriptions, Physics Today, on line access to the AGU Earth and Space Science Index and a few other goodies like discounts to meetings. AGU also has neat virtual journals where you get access to all of the articles in all AGU publications in a particular subject. Global Change (Eli subscribes) costs $218/yr, but if your interest is geochronology that costs $24/yr....)


UPDATE (2 hours, much fur later) Darnation (the little bunnies are still up) they are pushing the pictures onto Web Picassa. Since Google has shrunk the free space to 250 Mb from Blogger's 500, that means that soon Eli and the blog elite will have to start taking ads to pay the $24.95 for 6 Gig.