The tremendous destruction caused by Atlantic tropical cyclones, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, caused a substantial upsurge in interest in the subject of global warming by news media and the wider public, and concerns that global climatic change may have played a significant role in those events.
Time Magazine, for instance, published an article titled, “Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?”-however, the article itself addressed hurricanes in general, rather than Katrina specifically, and was inconclusive
Soon after the hurricane, former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote an op-ed piece for the Globe titled, “Katrina’s Real Name“, declaring that the hurricane’s “real name is global warming.” Gelbspan went on to assert:
Though Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with an extraordinary intensity by the blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The tremendous destruction caused by Atlantic tropical cyclones, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, caused a substantial upsurge in interest in the field of global warming. Time Magazine, for instance, published an article titled, “Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?” — However, the article itself addressed hurricanes in a general manner, rather than Katrina specifically, and was inconclusive.
Soon after the Katrina hit, former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote an op-ed piece for the Globe titled, “Katrina’s Real Name”, declaring that the hurricane’s “real name is global warming.” Gelbspan asserted: “Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.”
However Gelbspan did not single out Katrina from other recent storms in that regard; in the article he went on to attribute other major weather events over the preceding year to global warming, including a blizzard in Los Angeles, high winds in Scandinavia, wildfires in Spain, and a drought centered in Missouri.
