Figure 1

Fig 1. Time series of Atlantic basin intense hurricanes (dark bars) and weaker cyclones (gray bars) for 1940-1995. Intense hurricanes are those cyclones that attain sustained surface winds of at least 50 ms^-1 at some point in their life cycle. Weaker cyclones included all other remaining tropical storms, subtropical storms, and hurricanes. The superimposed lines are the linear best fits for the intense hurricanes (lower line) and for the total number of cyclones (upper line).