Climate link with killer cyclones spurs fierce scientific debate

PARIS (AFP) – Climate scientists have begun to debate whether global warming is producing more powerful storms, after Nargis smashed into Myanmar — brutally changing gear from a Category One to a Category Four cyclone just before it made landfall.

Nagris wasn’t an isolated incident: Hurricane Katrina laid waste to parts of the US Gulf Coast in 2005.


And in 2007, super-cyclone Gonu the Arabian peninsula was hit by a super-cyclone, Gonu.

Are these events — massively costly in lives and treasure — all linked?

Could they be part of an alarming trend of weird, more powerful storms stoked by global warming?

That’s a question that causes fierce jousting among climate scientists.

AFP