It has been known for some time that the number of hurricanes forming each year has been on the rise for the past two decades. But now in trying to establish whether this is a natural cycle, as some claim, or due to global warming a new study has looked back further, studying records from the year 1900 onwards.

Looking back a century or more the study concludes that hurricanes are twice as common now as they were then. Rising sea surface temperature, caused by climate change, is pointed out as an important contributing factor for this rise.

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