With Findings on Storms, Centrist Recasts Warming Debate

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

For decades, Kerry Emanuel, the meteorologist and hurricane specialist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was known as a cautious centrist on questions of global warming and hurricane ferocity.

Professor Emanuel asserted often that no firm link had been established between warming and the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.

But in August, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Professor Emanuel wrote in the journal Nature that he had discovered statistical evidence that hurricanes were indeed affected by global warming. He linked the increased intensity of storms to the heating of the oceans.