WASHINGTON (AP) - While some scientists fear global warming will lead to more hurricanes, so far it isn't happening. Indeed, the number of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico has declined in recent years, researchers say.
The peak period for Gulf hurricanes was 1916-1925 when 14 of the storms came ashore, including six severe hurricanes, according to a Florida State University report.
By contrast, nine hurricanes, including four severe ones, made landfall in 1976-85 and eight, one severe, occurred in 1986-95, according to the study in the July edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
The research was prompted by questions from New Orleans officials concerned that global change would lead to more hurricanes striking that city, located on the Gulf and largely below sea level.
``So we sat down and looked at the available data, and saw there's really no trend yet to support that'' fear, said Mark C. Bove, a graduate assistant at Florida State's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies.
It's hard to pinpoint a reason for the apparent decline in recent decades, Bove said in a telephone interview. But he noted that hurricane frequency can be affected by the El Nino phenomenon as well as other climate variables.
El Nino, an unusual warming of water in the eastern Pacific Ocean, can change weather worldwide and scientists say that years when it occurs tend to have few hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.
Last summer was marked by a strong El Nino, and just one hurricane made landfall in the United States, for example. Now that El Nino has ended, disaster preparedness officials fear more storms this summer.
William Gray, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University, has found indications of a 30-year cycle in hurricanes, Bove said.
Despite the fewer storms in recent decades, the sharp growth of coastal communities has placed more people at risk when storms do occur, Bove said, echoing a threat emergency preparedness managers have been citing for years.
An estimated 47 million people reside in coastal communities, and most have never been through a major hurricane. Emergency planners fear new residents may not respond to warnings when a storm occurs.
Bove said that he, graduate student David F. Zierden and professor James J. O'Brien studied hurricanes back to 1896 because those were the most reliable records available. A further analysis of the relationship between Atlantic hurricanes and El Nino is expected to be published in the fall, he said.
Their report on Gulf hurricanes focuses on storms that came ashore between Cape Sable, Fla., and Brownsville, Texas. To be rated as a hurricane a storm must have sustained winds of at least 65 knots (74.7 mph). To be considered severe, it must have winds of 96 knots (110.4 mph).
Here's the study's rundown on the hurricanes coming ashore along the Gulf Coast per decade:
-1896-1905: 8 storms, 1 severe.
-1906-1915: 13 storms, 6 severe.
-1916-1925: 14 storms, 6 severe.
-1926-1935: 11 storms, 7 severe.
-1935-1945: 13 storms, 4 severe.
-1946-1955: 9 storms, 3 severe.
-1956-1965: 10 storms, 5 severe.
-1966-1975: 11 storms, 5 severe.
-1976-1985: 9 storms, 4 severe.
-1986-1995: 8 storms, 1 severe.
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