The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society is a prestigious journal of the science. Its articles, like the speech of Goldsmith's schoolmaster, comprise "words of learned length and thundering sound", and often contain several columns devoted entirely to the hieroglyphics of what we used to know as higher mathematics: they may often run to 10 or 20 pages.
I was surprised, therefore, to find in the July 1998 issue a text that was only a little over a page in length. I was even more surprised to read its clear and unequivocal conclusion.
The article was entitled "Are Gulf Landfalling Hurricanes Getting Stronger?" and it was written by three meteorologists from the Florida State University called Bove, Zierden and O'Brien. The media would suggest in recent times that the response must be a loud, resounding "Yes!". The authors' answer is a simple "No!"
The researchers studied every hurricane the eye of which had ever crossed the US coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the 100 years from 1896 to 1995. To be classified a hurricane at all, the storm had to have winds in excess of 65 knots; they defined an "intense hurricane" as one with recorded winds exceeding 96 knots. The hurricanes were gathered, as they put it, into 10-year bins, and then classified as being "intense" or merely ordinary.
They found that, overall, the coast in question experienced more hurricanes in the first half of this century than in the second half. Moreover, there have been fewer hurricanes there with each passing decade since 1966.
And "intense" hurricanes showed the same trend: the decade from 1926 to 1935 saw the greatest number; there were more intense hurricanes in the first half of the century than in the second; and in the last decade of the study, that from 1986 to 1995, there were fewer than in any decade for 100 years.
Now, ain't that interestin'? Of course, if you do not wish to believe the central thesis you can criticise. The study, after all, is confined to a relatively small area and it may be, for example, that the Caribbean's most vigorous and destructive greenhouse hurricanes have developed a disinclination to invade the Gulf of Mexico. Nonetheless, the authors' conclusion makes up in unambiguous clarity what it may lack in literary style:
"With the explosive population growth the Gulf coast has seen over the past 20 years, the potential for hurricane damage in the region has increased dramatically. However, recent history shows a reduction in hurricane activity in the past 30 years, with no current indications of the trend stopping. Fears of increased hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico are premature."