The poster for An Inconvenient Truth said it all: fuelled by human activity, warming oceans are spawning ever more monstrous hurricanes. But all may not be lost – it’s just possible that El Niño will come to the rescue.
To study Atlantic hurricanes, Jeffrey Donnelly and Jonathan Woodruff of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts analysed sediment records going back 5000 years, only to find little correlation with ocean temperatures. What they did discover was that hurricanes were almost non-existent during periods of increased El Niño-related warming in the eastern Pacific, one of which lasted from 3600 to 2500…
