The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has speculated that climate change due to increasing amounts of anthropogenic "greenhouse" gases may result in increased tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and increased tropical rainfall associated with a slightly stronger intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) (Houghton et al., 1990, 1992, 1996). Because tropical cyclones extract latent and sensible heat from the warm tropical oceans and release the heat in its upper tropospheric outflow to fuel the storm's spin up, early work of the IPCC expressed concern that warmer SSTs will lead to more frequent and intense hurricanes, typhoons and severe tropical cyclones.