ABC News, 31 May 2006

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2025372&page=1

By CLAYTON SANDELL and LIZ MARLANTES

Protesters Call for Resignations, Say Government Ignoring Global Warming Effect
on Hurricanes

May 31, 2006 - To anyone who spent time watching hurricane forecasts last
summer, Max Mayfield may seem like a hero. The director of the National
Hurricane Center predicted many of the season's worst storms.

But a day before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, environmental groups
called for Mayfield and other officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, or NOAA, to resign.

"NOAA is actively covering up the strong and growing scientific link between
more powerful hurricanes and global warming," said Mike Tidwell, who represents
a group called the U.S. Climate Emergency Council.

The groups demanded that Mayfield and NOAA administrator Conrad Lautenbacher
step down.

"They must resign immediately," said Tidwell, in front of about 30 protesters
who'd gathered for a morning rally outside NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring,
Md.

NOAA officials declined to be interviewed today but released a statement saying
the agency had not taken a specific position on the relationship between global
warming and hurricane behavior.

"We recognize there is an ongoing scientific debate and will continue to support
research that might identify detectable influences of global warming in
hurricane frequency and/or intensity," the statement said.

One NOAA official, speaking on background, said today that not all of the
agency's scientists agree a global warming-hurricane link exists. Mayfield put
the blame on natural climate cycles when he testified before Congress in
September 2005.

"The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations and cycles of
hurricane activity," he said at the time.

But a growing body of peer reviewed scientific evidence - including a study
released today by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and MIT -
downplays the role of natural cycles and blames global warming - brought on by
human activities - as a factor heating the Atlantic Ocean, which in turn fuels
more intense hurricanes that may affect the United States.

"There have been some views put forward that what we are seeing in the Atlantic
is due to a natural variability," said Greg Holland, a climatologist at the
National Center for Hurricane Research. "The problem is that what we're seeing
in the Atlantic is mirrored all the way around the world. We're actually looking
at an entire world that is heating up, not just the Atlantic Ocean, which is why
we are absolutely convinced that there is a very large greenhouse warming signal
in what we're seeing."

Recent studies have shown that while the overall number of hurricanes has not
increased significantly, their intensity has increased. Holland said the
frequency of the strongest Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled around
the world since 1970.

Climate scientists say the increase is a result of warmer water temperatures
that put more water vapor into the atmosphere, which acts as fuel.

"A hurricane reaches out and grabs the available water vapor, sucks it into the
storm, and then dumps it down and concentrates it," says Kevin Trenberth, a
climatologist at the National Center for Hurricane Research. "So when it rains,
it pours now much more than it did 30 years ago."

Scientists like Trenberth try to quantify just how much impact global warming
has on storms.

"We think that probably the best number we can put on it about now is something
like 8 percent," he said. "So in New Orleans [during Katrina], where they had 12
inches of rain, about 1 inch of that was probably due to global warming and the
other 11 would have happened maybe anyway."

But following the 2005 season, NOAA released a statement discounting any link
between global warming and worsening hurricanes. It set off a furor among some
NOAA scientists, who charged the agency prevented them from speaking freely
about climate change issues.

NOAA backed away from that statement in February, and NOAA administrator
Lautenbacher sent an e-mail to agency staff.

"I am a strong believer in open, peer reviewed science as well as in the right
and duty of scientists to seek the truth and to provide the best scientific
advice possible," the e-mail read. Lautenbacher encouraged scientists "to speak
freely and openly" with journalists.

As for Mayfield, he suggested in a recent interview that he'd be willing to see
more evidence that hurricanes are getting worse because of global warming.

"I'm willing to be convinced either way here," Mayfield told ABC's Ned Potter.
"I'm always looking forward to looking at new data. If I get convinced, so be
it. But I'm not convinced yet."

Copyright 2006, ABC