Please join us at the Given Institute for a lecture on

Hurricanes and Global Warming: Mixing Science & Politics

Wednesday, June 27th at 7:00pm

Presented by:

Dr. Greg Holland

Director of NCAR’s Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division

The disastrous hurricane seasons of 2004 and especially 2005 brought a sudden public awakening of the potential consequences of global climate change. The subsequent media frenzy had a downside and an upside. The downside was the sometimes acrimonious public debate without the normal checks and balances of scientific review. The upside was a remarkable burst in creative research that has provided a marked improvement of our knowledge of many of the related processes and in our understanding of the major issues that still need to be addressed. This talk will focus on the upside. I will first address the uncertainties in the historical data on hurricanes with an emphasis on the North Atlantic, which has the best and longest hurricane record. I will then move to a discussion of natural variability and the manner in which hurricanes react to and potentially influence the climate. Finally I will provide a perspective on how climate change has already influenced hurricanes and where the future may take us.