There are indications of a global slowdown in hurricane speed, but the quality of historical data limits understanding at this point, and the possible mechanisms are not yet understood.

How the number of hurricanes that form each year may change is another major question that is not well understood.

There is no definitive theory explaining the number of storms in the current climate, or how it will change in the future.

Besides having the right environmental conditions to fuel a storm, the storm has to form from a disturbance in the atmosphere. There is currently a debate in the scientific community about the role of these pre-storm disturbances in determining the number of storms in the current and future climates.

Natural climate variations, such as El Niño and La Niña, also have a substantial impact on whether and where hurricanes develop. How they and other natural variations will change in the future and influence future hurricane activity is a topic of active research.

Scientists conduct attribution studies on individual storms to gauge how much global warming likely affected them, and those studies are currently underway for Ian.

However, individual attribution studies are not needed to be certain that the storm occurred in an environment that human-caused climate change made more favorable for a stronger, rainier and higher-surge disaster. Human activities will continue to increase the odds for even worse storms, year over year, unless rapid and dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are undertaken.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Mathew Barlow, UMass Lowell and Suzana J. Camargo, Columbia University. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

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3 reasons Hurricane Ian poses a major flooding hazard for Florida – a meteorologist explains

Suzana J. Camargo receives funding from NSF, NOAA, DOE, NASA, SwissRe Foundation, AON.

Mathew Barlow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.