One of the most vocal scientists in the field of hurricane prediction has backed away from his earlier certainty of a link between global warming and stronger hurricanes after developing a new forecasting technique that suggests a moderate increase – or even decline – in storm activity over the next 200 years.

Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his co-authors published their findings in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

"The results surprised me," Emanuel told the Houston Chronicle.