I spent Monday reporting on the American Meteorological Society’s annual convention in New Orleans. This is the mother of all weather conferences where many different aspects of weather and climate research are presented and discussed. About 5,000 scientists were in the Big Easy with specific conferencing geared toward a better understanding of tropical systems and the impact in our area, the State of Louisiana and New Orleans. Mayor Ray Nagin was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the kick-off luncheon Monday, but he was a no show. 
Although I was not privy to what events led up to this apparent snubbing, most insiders were indicating that it related to the politics of the current state of research and some of the hard facts as they relate to the New Orleans area…whatever the reason, it did not go over well with the AMS. I spent my day at the conference at the Tropical Symposium where spirited debate intertwined with even a few personal attacks.
Dr. Kerry Emmanuel, MIT, described a tropical future given IPCC data set projections (in a global warming world), while use of current weather databases, including tropical records, were hotly debated as the argument of data consistency, from Dr. Chris Landsea appeared quite valid. Landsea indicates that while recent reports show that we have reported more 
Category 5 storms in the Atlantic basin over the last several years, there were likely other big storms, in the post-satellite era, that were likely Category 5 status in some points of their life cycles. But over the last few years there has been more stringent classification of tropical systems and better interrogation of what’s happening inside these storms. Landsea therefore proposes that the recent upswing in tropical intensity is related more to our ability to better 
detect storm intensity. Dr. Tom Knutson, from the Geophysical Fluid Thermodynamics Lab at Princeton presented that given in a warmer world, there will likely be increased vertical wind shear, knocking down the number of storms in the Atlantic Basin, but there could be a signal for an increase in intensity on the higher end storms. Other tropical experts from around the world presented there findings, with many indicating that there has not been a net increase in worldwide tropical activity over the last thirty to forty years and there has actually been a slight down-turn in the Atlantic basin. Monday afternoon brought lively, and at times quite acerbic, debate. But the quote from Tom Knutson really struck a chord with the state of this research…”It is not appropriate to make any statements on where we are going with respect to tropical activity through the rest of this century.” Although it’s obvious to us in Southern Louisiana that we need to be current with global climate issue changes, especially with respect to sea level rise, any additional threat from tropical activity due to global warming is not considered a detectable or significant factor at this time. Every hurricane season should be considered a danger to us no matter what happens with the global climate.