Category 4 and 5 storms are also making up a larger share of the total number of hurricanes. Category 4 and 5 hurricanes made up about 20% of all hurricanes in the 1970s, but over the last decade they accounted for about 35% of these storms.
We're not even at the peak of the current cycle we're only halfway up and already we're seeing activity in the North Atlantic that's 50 percent worse than what we saw during the last peak in 1950.
We were not expecting to get caught up in the global warming debate when we published our initial research last September. But the whole question of global warming is something that has to be confronted.