CORRECTED-Warming temperatures could multiply Katrina-like
hurricanes -study (Corrects that IPCC assesses but does not run
computer simulations, and expands range of warming, paragraph 5)
* Extreme storms most sensitive to rising temperatures * Number
of strong hurricanes could increase seven-fold By Environment
Correspondent Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) -
The number of Atlantic storms with magnitude similar to killer
Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005,
could rise sharply this century, environmental researchers
reported on Monday. Scientists have long studied the
relationship between warmer sea surface temperatures and
cyclonic, slowly spinning storms in the Atlantic Ocean, but the
new study attempts to project how many of the most damaging
hurricanes could result from warming air temperatures as well.
The extreme storms are highly sensitive to temperature changes,
and the number of Katrina-magnitude events could double due to
the increase in global temperature