As the global rise in temperature heats the world's oceans, the intensity of hurricanes increases.
N. C. Makris, "The effect of saturated transmission scintillation on ocean-acoustic intensity measurements," J. Acoust.
"So if you have warmer warm tropical ocean, the potential intensity of hurricanes increases". In fact, "the ocean temperatures in that region are considerably above where they were on the strongest El Niño on record previously.
These fluctuations, corresponding to Indian Ocean monsoon (IOM) intensity oscillations resulting from glacial boundary forcing (e.g. sea surface temperatures), occurred on timescales as short as decadal to multidecadal [32].
Possible responses to other climate change stressors such as sea level rise, ocean circulation, storm intensity, and freshwater influx also require further research, and may not have management options as well explored and tested as those for traditional stressors such as pollution, commercial fishing, invasive species, and diseases.
I will wait on the attribution studies for Harvey, Irma, and Maria, but as a scientist I generally see scientific evidence of increasing sea level (which affects storm surge), warmer oceans (which fuel intensity), and poleward shifts in the maximum intensity.
Elsner, J. B., Trepanier, J. C., Strazzo, S. E. & Jagger, T. H. Sensitivity of limiting hurricane intensity to ocean warmth.
One of the expected effects of global warming is an increase in hurricane intensity: Higher ocean temperatures lead to an exponentially higher water evaporation rate in the atmosphere, increasing the intensity of hurricanes.
A photocell may be lowered into the ocean to measure light intensity at discrete depths and to determine light reduction from the surface value or from the previous depth value.
N. C. Makris, "A foundation for logarithmic measures of fluctuating intensity in ocean-acoustics," A.B. Wood Memorial Lecture, Proceedingsof the Institute of Acoustics 15, Nottingham, UK (1996).
