Heat, hurricanes and global warming linked?

06:52 PM CDT on Monday, September 26, 2005

By TOM HARRIS / KVUE News

The calendar may say it's almost October, but Mother Nature isn't giving Texas much of a break when it comes to the heat. Could it be tied to global warming?

The official high Sunday was 108 degrees.

Mitch Deville just moved to Austin and so far, he's not impressed with summer.

"I don't know what the answer is I don't know what the problem is ... but I think it's time to move onto winter," he said.

Newcomer Haydee Denis says she can take the heat. She packed up what she could in the middle of the night before Katrina blasted New Orleans, and now she calls Austin home.

"I always thought about coming to Austin, so I just packed up the dogs and packed up my car... I left New Orleans at 4:30 in the morning," she said.

But have hurricane and heat intensities increased? And if so, what has caused the increase? KVUE News asked experts at the University of Texas.

"Whether global warming is responsible for the last two years of warming would be premature to make these links. I think we need to look at a longer time scale," said Dr. Jay Banner, the director of the Environmental Sciences Institute.

Banner does believe global warming is affecting today's weather. He points to two consecutive studies just released -- one from the Journal of Science, the other from the Journal of Nature -- which indicate global warming is increasing the intensity of hurricanes.

"Here is some rigorous analysis of the data over the past 30 years that suggests that there is a connection with the warming of our atmosphere and the intensities of hurricanes," he said.

Experts predict more studies on the possible link between global warming and hurricanes will be done after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast.