The most powerful storms on our planet have grown substantially stronger, and almost forty years' worth of hurricane satellite imagery suggest a warming planet might be fuelling the changes.

全球最强风暴变得更强了，近四十年的飓风卫星图像显示，地球变暖可能加剧了这一变化。

According to the data, the likelihood of a hurricane developing into a category 3 storm or greater, with sustained winds of over 177 kilometres per hour (110 miles per hour), has increased by about 8 percent every decade since 1979.

数据显示，1979年以来，飓风发展成持续风速超过每小时177公里(每小时110英里)的3级或更强风暴的可能性每十年就增加约8%。

"Our results show that these storms have become stronger on global and regional levels, which is consistent with expectations of how hurricanes respond to a warming world," says climate scientist James Kossin from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

美国海洋及大气管理局气候科学家James Kossin说：“结果表明这些风暴在全球和地区层面都有所加强，这符合全球变暖条件下飓风的变化”。

Climate researchers have long suspected there would be an increase in stronger hurricanes, since warmer ocean temperatures and added moisture in the atmosphere tend to energise these storms.

气候研究人员一直怀疑更强飓风会增多，因为海洋温度上升，大气中水分增加，这些因素会激发风暴。

Real-world data, however, has been trickier to come by. Hurricanes – also known as tropical cyclones and typhoons, depending on where they originate – only appear sporadically, and can be difficult to study. Plus, these storms are often ignored if they don't directly impact upon on humans.

但现实中的数据更难获得。飓风又被称为热带气旋和台风，名字不同是因为发生地不同。飓风只是偶尔出现，很难研究。而且这些风暴如果没有对人类产生直接影响，通常会被忽视。

"The main hurdle we have for finding trends is that the data are collected using the best technology at the time," says Kossin.

Kossin说：“我们了解发展飓风趋势的主要障碍是搜集数据使用的都是当时最好的技术。”

"Every year the data are a bit different than last year, each new satellite has new tools and captures data in different ways, so in the end we have a patchwork quilt of all the satellite data that have been woven together."

“每年的数据都和前一年有点差异，每个新的卫星都有新的工具，获取数据的方式也不同。所以，最终我们把所有的卫星数据拼凑在一起。”

Thanks to computers though, which can help us to interpret satellite images of storms around the world, the team has now shown that from 1979 to 2017 there was a detectable trend toward stronger hurricanes – and this matches up consistently with greenhouse warming simulations.

但是多亏了计算机，它们能帮助我们解读全球风暴的卫星图像，该团队表示从1979年到2017年有明显的飓风变强的趋势，这一直与温室效应模拟相一致。