Kerry Emanuel Quotations

I was skeptical that the increase (in hurricane intensity) would be sufficient to observe by now ... (but) the increase has been much more than we would have guessed.

I think we have a certain amount of climate change locked into the system. Even if we stop burning fossil fuel, the atmosphere and the ocean are going to take a while to respond. It's a very tough question for society. We're taking a gamble. We don't know all the global consequences.

I will go out on a limb and say, eventually, we will accomplish this,

My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in hurricanes' destructive potential.

There are problems in the data to be sure, but they are problems that can be dealt with.

When you look at global hurricane activity, you really do see a trend. It's up everywhere.

Unfortunately, in the issue of the frequency of storms, we're still kind of in the dark. We don't understand that issue very well.

We could see that was going to happen about the time Katrina came off the west coast of Florida,

It was almost like .Ê.Ê. a diabolical storm.

It was almost like . . . a diabolical storm.

This is the first time I have been convinced we are seeing a signal in the actual hurricane data.

This isn't rocket science. If you look at the record of hurricane activity in the Atlantic going back 100 years, you see that there are periods of high activity and periods of low activity.

The best way to put it is that storms are lasting longer at high intensity than they were 30 years ago.

The large upward surge in hurricane damage in the US, is clearly owing to the confluence of rapidly increasing coastal population with a decadal time-scale upswing in Atlantic hurricane activity,

The temperature of the tropic oceans is warmer than it's been in 150 years

The hurricanes are following the tropical ocean temperature. The tropical ocean temperature is following the Northern Hemisphere. And it's very hard now to believe that there's anything natural about that.

It is tempting to ascribe Katrina, Rita and now Wilma to global warming effects, but I am not sure that would pass statistical muster.

As you warm the climate, you basically raise the speed limit on hurricanes

Hurricanes have killed more people worldwide in the last 50 years than any other natural cataclysm.

The damage and casualties produced by more intense storms could increase considerably in the future.