No connection between one storm and global warming

Hurricane Katrina was the big poster storm for the global warming debate, but the link between the hurricane and global warming may be weaker than commonly thought, said Peter Bowyer, program manager at the Canadian Hurricane Centre.
There is no connection between this one event and global warming, he told delegates at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction’s Forum ‘Hurricanes in Canada’ on June 25 in Toronto.
He said the probability of a storm like Katrina happening is the same as rolling a six on nine dice. The probability of a storm like Katrina occurring in an event such as global warming would be like rolling a six on eight dice.
“At no point can you actually say that anything with these statistics had to do with that storm being there other than to say it just is a little more likely, it’s just a little bit easier,” Bowyer said. “But you can’t relate the events directly.”
He went on to say that while the debate continued within the scientific community, the most compelling argument he heard was from Dr. Chris Lancey at the National Hurricane Centre. Lancey had said, according to Bowyer, that it is not fair to be asking the data whether there is an increase in storm activity, especially since the data is not homogenous. While hurricane records go back to 1851, satellites were not introduced until the 1960s. This means that today there is incredible data and detail available that was not even imaginable before, Lancey said, according to Bowyer.
There are instances where the only way data could have been obtained in the past was if a ship had run into a storm and have lived to come back to land and tell about it.
“Maybe we are not seeing more of them out there now because maybe there aren’t more of them out there,” Bowyer said. “Maybe we’re seeing more of them out there because we’re simply better at seeing them.”