The past year has seen a tremendous burst in creative research on the relationships between hurricanes and climate, especially in the North Atlantic. While it has long been known that hurricanes respond to a number of natural climatic variations, our understanding has now extended to the stage where the balance of evidence indicates a discernable contribution from anthropogenic effects also. Less well known, but the subject of current work, is the impact that hurricanes may have on modifying the climate. This understanding, which will have advanced substantially between the writing of this abstract and the presentation of the paper, leads us naturally to questions of how to quantify the underlying uncertainty. And this does not just imply the traditional uncertainty measures associated with data or model errors, it extends into estimations of the proportional contributions of various natural and anthropogenic factors and potential contributors to future hurricane changes.

I will attempt to address quantification of these errors, both traditional and non-traditional. The presentation will be more philosophical than prescriptive and aimed at generating discussion and ideas on how to move on this important aspect.