Historical Comparisons Of Mid-Ocean Hurricanes Are Meaningless

The track of Hurricane Julia shows the problem. It is quite likely that Julia would have been missed completely seventy years ago. Even if she were discovered, the probability of catching her peak intensity was close to zero.

Modern hurricane records are biased sharply upwards in both quantity and magnitude because of improved monitoring. Historical comparisons of anything other than landfalling hurricanes are meaningless and misleading.

About Tony Heller

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7 Responses to Historical Comparisons Of Mid-Ocean Hurricanes Are Meaningless

  1. Mike Davis says:

    Historical land fall does not give an accurate description of intensity because people tend to use today’s standards for comparison without taking into account simple items like quality of construction. They count number of structures damaged based on some average structures per acre.
    Land fall does tell you there was a possible hurricane!

  2. Lazarus says:

    “Historical comparisons of anything other than landfalling hurricanes are meaningless and misleading.”

    What utter nonsense! How can only considering landfalling hurricanes (is that US landfall only?) be any less misleading when counting Hurricanes?

    There were 12 Hurricanes this season and none made land fall on the US, how many of those does you less misleading system count?

  3. Andy Weiss says:

    The National Hurricane Center plays this game. Before the season starts, the predict the number of storms. But they are the ones that name the storms! Determining what is or what isn’t a tropical storm or hurricane is subjective and they are can easily manipulate the number of storms. Back in the days when things were less political, they would probably not even bother with storms at 20N and 30W

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