Hurricane Katrina? Mother nature or global warming?

Question

Why some people argue that Katrina isnt about global warming...it just a mother nature life cycle?

Why it occured more and more powerful over the years started from the sea. It seems getting worse than 20-50 years ago.

Answer 1

Katrina was barely a Category 3 when it made landfall. What's so unusual about a Category 3 hurricane? Certainly not due to global warming.

Answer 2

The real answer is not known and probably too complicated to ever know for sure but having said that we can make a pretty good guess. Both are probably responsible. Hurricanes are known to go through cycles that last several decades and we are just leaving a quiescent period and starting into a more active period. However we also know that hurricanes get their energy from warm water and we know that global warming is heating the waters of the Gulf of Mexico so it is likely that Katrina was stronger than it might have otherwise been without global warming and it occurred at all mostly because of the natural cycle of more active hurricanes we have entered. I expect we will continue to see more and more powerful hurricanes in the future.

There has been hurricane studies recently that found evidence that increased storm strength is correlated with increased global temperatures. That evidence has been disputed but most reputable climate scientists think the link is plausible if yet unproven.

Answer 3

currently we are in several cycles, one is a cycle that is similar to weather we had during the dust bowl days of the thirties. Another is an occilation of the pacific cooling and the Atlantic warming (this is why there was only one named storm in the pacific during June, while it normally has 5 per month), the gulf stream is also shifting slightly, and has reduced in strength over the last decade or so. Add to this, some of the several cycles of the sun which include a 300 year cycle, and the sunspot cycle which is around 11-13 years. While mankind is putting a large amount of CO2 in the air, we have volcanos (which have been more active of late) both active and dormant, that release thousands of tons of CO2, and sulfer dioxide into the atmospere. The thing you have to remember about global warming, is that if we are doing this to the earth, how is it, that mars is also experiencing global warming too? It is being fed by that unregulated nuclear furnace 93 million miles from here, more so than any and all of man's short forays into climate change....

Answer 4

Because this is not the 1st time this has happened. Do you think the category 5 hurricane was invented last year. No, they have been around, they have hit before.

The reason why we heard so much, because New Orleans is a densely populated city then the levee systems collapsed. If Katrina hit an unpopulated island do you think anyone would have cared once it was over. Nope.

Did you know that the only known island to be wiped out by a hurricane was off the coast of New York. Go look it up and you will see it is not so abnormal. Of course if people used their brains and did not build a city that is below sea level, if they did not build on coasts that continuously get hammered and lose their homes every few years, do you think anyone would care?


Now get a grip, do some reading and studying and understanding.

Answer 5

Because of the strenght of katrina combined with unprecedented number of other hurricanes occurring more and more each year is there really any doubt? Hurricanes draw strenght from warm water, on the average over the last ten years, most agree the earths over all average temperature has increased half a degree, do you really want to keep your head in the sand and see what happens after another half degree? The polar ice caps are disappearing fast and this ice used to reflect a good amount of the suns warming rays back into space, now these rays are further warming the melted water. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see whats going to happen next.

Answer 6

Mother nature of course!

I must be honest, we cannot deny that the earth is going through a warming trend these days. Furthermore, It's a proven fact that oceans tempratures have much to do with the earth's climate, possibly moreso than things happening in our atmosphere. But I refuse to believe that man is primarily responsible altering any of it. I believe that the activities of man here on earth have little to do with global warming. Please understand, I am not an expert by any means, but I am a thinker and I've done a lot of reading. This, plus my own observations lead me to believe that so much volcanic activity, especially under our oceans has much more to do with global warming than anything else. OOPs, I'm sorry, lately it's been referred to a "Global Climate Change." Nevertheless, I've said that to say this.

I believe that hurricanes, their makeup, their severity and where they go have more to do with ocean temperature than anything else. I read some items about hurricanes recently and I learned something that makes more sense than anything else I ever heard. I believe a huricane is a natural occurrance, part of a natural cycle designed to regulate ocean temperature. The warmer the ocean, the more severe they get, the cooler, the more moderate they are. Case in point....... Last year the waters of the gulf of mexico were some of the warmest on record. Guess where all the hurricanes went and when they hit the gulf waters, they turned very mean, very quickly.

Maybe I'm wrong, wouldn't be the first time. But, I heard one time that a hurricane is a sort of a heat machine, that they seem to be drawen to the warmest water because that's what feeds them. Which ever patch of ocean is the warmest, that's where they seem to go. I haven't done a study, but I'll bet anything that when the gulf cools down, possibly this year, maybe next, and the gulf stream is relatively warmer, hurricanes will eventually tend to go up the east cost as they did in the 50's and 60's. I also recall back in the 60's, the environmentalists, were driving us all nuts with their forcasts of the coming "Ice age". The oceans were cooler then too and the gulf stream was relatively warmer. Guess where many of the hurricanes went.

I'm theorizing that a hurricane is nothing more than a large scale model of a cooling tower at a nuclear power plant. The hot water from the output of the cooling system of the reactor is discharged into the cooling tower basin. The natural updraft of the tower draws off the heat and steam of the water which is then sucked up to the top of the tower where it is dissapated into the upper air. I believe a hurricane works much the same way. The low pressure at the base of the storm draws the warmer water up into the upper part of the storm where it is condensed and then falls as cooler rain. The storm surge is a result of this drawing affect caused by this low pressure. I believe this low pressure as it draws on the water below it, is strong enough to raise the surface level of the water directly underneith which moves with the storm. The lower the pressure goes, the higher the surge. Another case in point......again I might be wrong, feel free to jump on me if I am, but wasn't the pressure associated with Katrina at one point one of the lowest ever recorded, thus a very high surge?

Back to global warming, Yes I believe that the present warming cycle of the earth has much to do with polution activity, but is man causing it? I doubt it very much. Another observation.....I believe I heard somewhere that when Mt. Pintitubo (SP?) in the Phillipines blew it's top several years ago, it blew more dust and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during those few days than man here on earth had ever done from before the industrial revolution, to the present time. Furthermore, I also heard about an active volcano in Anartica that is continually spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in that area. Now If certain greenhouse gases are responsible for the hole that we've been hearing so much about in the ionisphere over the south pole, it might be reasonable to look towards this as being a major cause. Yet how much have we heard about this volcano in the news and from environmentalists?

Can man stop global warming? I think he can as soon as someone comes up with a way to cap a few volcanoes

I am shockeedoc.

Answer 7

Mother Nature

Answer 8

Mother Nature

Answer 9

I think both because it was mother nature at it's worse but global warming had an effect on it because the warmer water allowed it to strengthen to a 5 before dropping to 3 which still made a lasting impact on the gulf coast.

Answer 10

LIke most things in Nature, hurricane strength and frequency run in cycles.. some of them hundreds of years long.
This just happens to be in the "lots of storms" part of the cycle.
The things which drives hurricanes is heat from the ocean, and even that moves in cycles... and it's at the "Warm" end of the cycle right now.

As the old saying about Florida weather goes, "If you don't like it, wait a while..." In this case, a few years