PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 1 (UPI) -- Global warming is likely to produce stronger and wetter hurricanes in coming decades, a study shows.
The study indicates that by the 2080s, seas warmed by concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases could cause a typical hurricane to intensify by about half a step in destructive power, the New York Times said Friday.
Further, the study, done on supercomputers at the Commerce Department's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., says rainfall up to 60 miles from the core would be nearly 20 percent more intense.
It is "by far and away the most comprehensive effort" to assess the question using powerful computer simulations, says Dr. Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says this study "clinches" the link between the warming of tropical oceans and storm intensity.
Emanuel and the study's authors say it's too soon to know whether hurricanes would form more frequently in a warmer world.
