HURRICANES IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM

Records of hurricane activity over the past century or so have made it abundantly clear that activity levels are sensitive to the climate state. In this brief talk, I will review this evidence together with recent findings from the young field of paleotempestology and place such records in the context of recent theoretical advances. These, together with the results of downscaling global climate models, will be used to assess the quality of recent projections of the response of hurricane activity to anthropogenic climate change. Finally, I will review evidence that clustering of tropical convection in general, and hurricanes in particular, may have important effects on the climate itself, with implications for understanding past climates.