The actual WMO press release has a different take-away, titled, "Link between climate change and tropical cyclone intensity: more research necessary(posted on 11 December)."

According to the release the forecasters do indicate that "no firm link can YET be drawn" (emphasis added), further the WMO will be launching an effort to further study tropical cyclones in conjunction with the tropical cyclone research and forecasting community.

http://www.wmo.ch/news/news.html

No surprise. Hasn't warming been only one degree F? Despite all the hurricanes of 2005 none measured up to Camille at U.S. landfall. I mention Camille because it weakened little as it moved north wheras Rita and Katrina both weakened substantially. Camille is the standard for greenhouse warming and a supposed link to hurricane intensity. Greenhouse warming was less in 1969.

Well... according to commensence.org, global warming
is not polticly an "issue" yet. In my opinion, if it isn't an issue it isn't an issue until the government releases data that proves that it is an issue.

I am a researcher on the important issue of Global Warming, and it really is a conflict. I went to Greenland, and huge, 100 ton or more chunks or ice are constantly falling into the ocean/ water below.

Pretty soon, we will have no big ice masses left on the Earth. Also, the Earth will be very dangerous for our kids when they grow up.

So you can see, Global Warming is a problem, and we must come up with a solution fast!

Here's a link to the statement that was issued by the WMO,

Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change
http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/press_releases/2006/iwtc_statement.pdf

There's a summary statement accompanying this, as well,

Summary Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change
http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/press_releases/2006/iwtc_summary.pdf

The summary basically consists of ten "consensus" statements, which I think are short enough to paste here:

1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.
2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.
3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.
4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades, leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.
5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes,
whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.
6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per
degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.
7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.
8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical
cyclone numbers in a warmer climate, there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is
unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.
9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.
10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase.

In my opinion, if it isn't an issue it isn't an issue until the government releases data that proves that it is an issue.

I hope anon is being ironic and facetious. Surely he or she sees that this is a prescription for government denial of politically inconvenient truth.

This government has a stellar track record of refusing to release politically inconvenient data. The FDA, for example, spent the last year jumping handsprings to keep certain drugs off the over-the-counter market for religious/political reasons.

We can only hope that the new post-2006 elections political climate may finally bring some objectivity to the government's role in researching and releasing climate data.

I think none you actually have either worked in the field of Synoptic Meterology or Tropical Meterology. The WMO's report was in response to Emmanual's 2005-2006 statistical analysis of 35 years of tropical cyclones and AGW. His study was basically given a big thumbs down. The WMO can find absolutely no correlation between AGW and Tropical Storms -either thier numbers or intensity. Anyone who who has either forecasted tropical storms, or forecated weather or a synoptic scale knows that there is much more to the formation to tropical storms than just warm SSTs. Any type of verticale shear will destroy developing storms. The presence of deep mid-latitude troughing ( as we saw this year over the Central Atlantic) will also preclude tropical storm activity. For the Eastern Atlantic, hot dry West African winters/springs are usually a precursor to an active season, as westerly traveling boundary layer waves propegate off this feature during the Summers. But, even if there conditons are met, the above mentioned detriments would preclude any organized activity.

The North Atlantic Oscillation, as well as the Mlutidecadal Oscillation (oscillating warm-cold SSTs over the Atlantic) are also very important when evaluating tropical storm activtiy. It's even more complicated over the IO (Indian Ocean) and Pacific. There is much more to tropical storm activity than the AGW crowd suggest.

At the end of the ice ages, there was global warming to melt the ice. Did man cause that? Of course not. The earth's temperature has and always will fluctuate. Anyone who believes that man causes this is arrogant. Has man been able to produce one cloud? No. Has man been able to divert one tornado? No. Man has no control over weather or temperature. Does this mean that we should pollute? No. But extreme measures that hurt the economy and therefore peoples ability to live healthy productive lives are not called for.

Here on the Colorado plateau, a bit of GLOBAL WARMING would not hurt us, we could welcome it.Its about time that this last ice age come to an end as my snowplow won't push all this snow any higher. signed : SCIENCE TEACHER FOR GLOBAL WARMING.