It’s easy to just look at the hurricane season intensify and blame it on the weather, but instead we should be looking at our own actions that cause the storms to become ever more violent. According to a study published in the journal Nature, scientists have uncovered evidence that point to a direct link between global warming and the intensity of storms worldwide.

Researchers James Elsner and Thomas Jagger of the Florida State University, together with James Kossin of the University of Wisconsin, revealed that rising ocean temperatures are directly linked with the upward tendency in the average number or intensity of storms. Statistic data showed a shift towards stronger storms, with maximum wind speeds of over 210 kilometers per hour (category 4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale).

Over the past three decades, the maximum wind speeds of the strongest tropical cyclones have increased significantly, just as the effects of global warming became more obvious. The aspect that should worry us the most is that this trend will continue in the future as well, as this will reflect on the number of victims and the damages left by the passing of cyclones over populated areas.

According to this study, a 1 ºC increase in sea surface temperatures would lead to a 31% increase in the global frequency of category 4 and 5 storms per year. So far, the temperature of tropical oceans has increased by 0.5 ºC since 1970, which means that over the next century, if the trend continues, we may see a 2 ºC increase.

If the calculations prove to be accurate, and many believe they are, it means we will soon have 17 strong cyclones, instead of 13, per year. Furthermore, the scientists found that the ocean basin with the largest increase in tropical cyclone winds is the North Atlantic one; however, that data does not apply to all basins.

Another study, completed three years ago by Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, supports the idea: “It’ll be pretty hard now for anyone to claim that cyclone activity has not increased,” Curry said.

Together with her colleagues, Curry wrote in her study that category 4 and 5 storms have doubled in number since 1970, and have intensified as well. The study was based on statistics and archives of satellite records, however, some scientists believe the data to be unreliable or irrelevant for drawing conclusions on strong cyclone trends, and the same doubts applied to the most recent study as well.

Among the skeptics, Christopher W. Landsea of the National Hurricane Center, said the data is discontinued by the lack of satellites that were observing the storms above the Indian Ocean before 1977. Furthermore, Landsea said: “The paper has some elegantly calculated statistics, but these are generated on data that are not, in my opinion, reliable for examining how the strongest tropical cyclones have changed around the world.”

However that may be, and whether the study is 100 percent accurate or not, there is one undeniable aspect of this entire story: the hurricanes have increased in intensity, and people should be aware that every year, we are likely to encounter stronger storms, in larger numbers, leaving devastating effects in the affected areas.