For more information, see the ClimateStock home page. Jane Smith reports. Last year's Hurricane Mitch killed more than 9,000 people in Central America. Mitch is just one of the Atlantic hurricanes that made the past four years the most active on record. And the upcoming season is expected to be another busy one.
Scientists can track hurricanes with satellites after they form.
But they can also project the amount of activity for a whole year using climate data. At the same time, unusually warm waters in the Atlantic provide extra fuel for hurricanes that develop there. Global warming is expected to raise air and ocean temperatures across much of the globe over the next century. How this will affect hurricanes is now being studied. It's a very active area of research and there are no definitive conclusions at this point.