Is Global Warming Leading to an Increase in the Total Number of Atlantic Storms? (Part I: The Debate)

It may seem a strange question to be asking in a season that, so far, hasn't yet seen an Atlantic hurricane. But while the weather in any given year can be tricky and unpredictable, there's no doubt that we're currently in an active period for Atlantic storms in general--and now, a new paper (PDF) from Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Peter Webster of Georgia Tech explicitly ties this period of heightened activity to global warming by asserting that the total number of Atlantic storms has increased markedly over the past century, in correlation with rising sea surface temperatures. At the outset, it's worth noting that National Hurricane Center specialist Chris Landsea's rebuttal (PDF) to the Holland/Webster paper was published in EOS back in May, well before the Holland/Webster paper itself officially came out (in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering ...