May 2006: NOAA Blocks Release of Report Linking Climate Change to Hurricane Intensity

A panel consisting of seven climate scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have completed a consensus report on the views of agency scientists concluding that global warming may have an impact on the intensity of hurricanes. The report is due to be released this month. But in an email sent to the panel’s chair, Ants Leetmaa, a Department of Commerce official says the report will not be released and needs to be modified so it is less technical. When this is reported in the journal Nature in September, the NOAA will deny that the report was blocked, insisting that the publication in question was just a two-page fact sheet about the issue. The agency says there were two reasons it wasn’t released: one, it wasn’t completed before the beginning of the annual hurricane season, and two, the agency cannot take an official position on a field of science that is changing so quickly. However Leetmaa notes that the draft did not take an official position of any kind; rather it just referred to the “current state of the science” [Associated Press, 9/27/2006; Giles, 9/28/2006]