There is a widespread belief that hurricanes and tropical cyclonic storms in general have increased in frequency and strength. This is a justified concern due to the existence of global warming and the potential loss of life and property damage generated by these immense storms.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I have read about climate change and hurricanes (and cyclones):

* In 1886 there were 7 major hurricanes that year, four hit Texas and three that hit florida. (See the hurricane tracking map for that year[1].) This was the most active year on record for hurricanes in the US, see[8].

* Barack Obama had the best record for hurricanes, only four hurricanes over eight years. Taft (1909-1913) had 13 in just four years over five times the rate that Obama had. Bush had 18, and Trump has had 7. The numbers are all over the place.[2]

* Claims that increasing ocean surface temperature will clearly generate more intense hurricane activity need to be tempered by an understanding of the energy source that drives hurricanes. It is not temperature; it is the temperature delta between the surface temperature and the overlying air that provides the energy for hurricanes, see [3], and the troposhere is warming faster than the surface according to climate scientists [4]. Wouldn't this mean that there should be less powerful and or less frequent hurricanes.

* Global climate-related deaths have dropped dramatically over the last century according to data from Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [5] and cited with a figure on p. 74 of [6].

* The IPCC 5 Summary Volume Final report technical summary (TFE.9, Table 1 on page 110) has this to say concerning the statement: "Increases in intense tropical cyclone activity". "Low confidence" that changes occured (since 1950), "Low confidence" of a human contribution to observed changes, and "Low confidence" of further changes in early 21st century. See p. 110 [7].

The IPCC, in general, has low confidence that climate change is currently responsible for changes in hurricane intensity.

* We can't rely on our own personal experience for understanding hurricane frequency, obviously.

[1] https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-1886.png

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/26/us-hurri...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone

[4] https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/05/06/troposphere-warmi...

[5] https://www.emdat.be

[6] Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm, Basic Books, NY, 2020.

[7] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WG1AR5_Summa...

[8] https://rogerpielkejr.com/2019/01/17/global-tropical-cyclone...