Day 2 of the Winter Summit in Steamboat was spearheaded by
Stanley Goldenberg. Stan is head of NOAA's Hurricane Research
Division. He has flown 100 flights in a P3 hurricane hunter and
continued his research in improving hurricane forecast and
models. The years of 1995-2005 have experienced the highest
level of North Atlantic hurricane activity in the reliable
record. Compared with the generally low activity of the previous
24 years (1971-1994), the last 11 years doubling of overall
activity of the basin, a 2.5-fold increase in major hurricanes
and a five fold increase in hurricanes affecting the Caribbean
region. As for the increase in major hurricane activity, this is
not implying the basin is seeing stronger hurricanes, but rather
more of them. This is very similar to what we saw this past
hurricane season with 19 named storms, but only 1 major
hurricane and only 2 landfalling hurricanes in the lower 48. The
greater activity results from simultaneous increases in North
Atlantic sea-surface temperatures and