As a result, continued increases in the Earth's temperature likely will lead to more "enhanced hurricane activity" in the years ahead, said climate analysts Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"I don't see how the hell they can say that," said [William Gray], 76, emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State. "We're just in one of these warming trends due to the ocean circulation and there's nothing we can do about it."

In a separate report released yesterday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences said that "proxy" climate records, such as the width of tree rings and the chemical makeup of ice from deep beneath the Greenland snowpack, indicate with "high confidence" that the Earth is warmer now than it has been in the past 400 years.