As officials from Providence and eight surrounding communities strategized yesterday about how they’d handle a storm such as the 1938 hurricane, a prominent federal scientist told an audience at the University of Rhode Island that it was too soon to know whether climate change would cause more frequent hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Hurricane season has just begun. This year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a near normal or above hurricane season, with a 60- to 70-percent chance of 12 to 16 named storms, including 6 to 9 hurricanes and 2 to 5 major hurricanes.

While it’s clear that the earth’s climate has warmed over the last century, it’s premature to conclude that human activity is affecting the Atlantic hurricane climate, said Tom Knutson, a meteorologist with NOAA’s geophysical fluid dynamics lab.

Knutson was a guest lecturer yesterday in the university’s Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting lecture series continuing this week. His conclusions, which will be published in the Journal of Climate, launch into the debate about the effect global warming will have on future hurricane seasons.

Scientists expect that hurricanes might be influenced by global warming because they are fueled by warmer sea-surface temperatures, Knutson said. There is recent evidence that overall hurricane activity in the Atlantic may have increased in association with the rise in global mean temperature and warmer waters, he said.

However, although the 128-year record appears to show a rise in annual storm counts, matching the rise in sea temperature, the record didn’t include all storms, because the methods of data collection have changed. By adjusting for storms estimated to have occurred before satellites were used for detection, there’s less evidence for significant increase in storm activity, he said.

Knutson used a computer model of past hurricane activity to examine the effect of global warming on development of hurricanes. The model projected increases in vertical wind shear, which can tear apart tropical storms and actually could decrease Atlantic hurricanes, he said. The computer model saw tropical storms decrease by 27 percent, the number of hurricanes drop by 18 percent, and major hurricanes decrease by 8 percent, he said.

Rhode Island hasn’t seen a major storm in decades. Yesterday’s tabletop exercise of the 1938 hurricane, conducted simultaneously in Providence and other municipalities using a $70,000 federal grant, was a test of knowledge and skill with something that none of them have truly faced before.

“It’s an eye-opening experience for a lot of people, and the problem is, no one has been through [a major hurricane] before,” said Providence Assistant Fire Chief Michael Dillon. “We want to over-prepare now, so we don’t have any holes in the response.”

In Providence, about 75 people from city government, the colleges, the state police, hospitals, and other agencies gathered at Johnson & Wales University’s Harborside Campus to discuss how they’d handle the storm, before and after. “The greatest value in this is you bring together all of those people and develop relationships, that you won’t have to do for the first time during an emergency,” said Peter T. Gaynor, the director of the Providence Emergency Management Agency.

And so it was during the scenarios that were posed to the officials who, in reality, would be responsible during a crisis. They talked about massive power failures and the sewage backup caused by closing the hurricane barrier, dealing with the massive piles of debris, smashed buildings, and toppled trees left after a major storm. They discussed how they’d restore water and power, when people would be allowed to return home, how they’d communicate with each other and the public. They’d need to stop looters, assess the damage, and work on getting the city back in order.

Kyle Olson, the president of The Olson Group Ltd., which was facilitating the exercises in all of the municipalities yesterday, said the intent was to help the participants work through their policies and plans, and see how the departments work together. The scenarios were meant to test whether the participants understood the implications of even the smallest actions, he said. “Disasters are built on innumerable small actions, good and bad,” he said.

amilkovi@projo.com