evidence: It's also important to point out that ocean temperatures are not the only factor that is crucial in knowing which disturbances will develop into a tropical storm and which systems will intensify to become extremely strong hurricanes. Other physical "ingredients" in the hurricane "recipe" include moist air and numerous thunderstorms, weak vertical wind shear (the difference in winds near the ocean versus the upper part of the atmosphere), and a triggering disturbance (in the Atlantic this is often from an African easterly wave in the atmosphere)6. Any manmade alterations to the air's moisture, thunderstorm activity, vertical shear, and originating disturbances may be as or even more important that changes to the ocean temperatures themselves. All climate models predict that for every degree of warming at the ocean that the air temperature aloft will warm around twice as much7. This is important because if global warming only affected the earth's surface, then there would be much more energy available for hurricanes to tap into. But, instead, warming the upper atmosphere more than the surface along with some additional moisture near the ocean means that the energy available for hurricanes to access increases by just a slight amount.