Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ? At least as it pertains to hurricanes, it seems global warming might be a good thing.

Two South Florida scientists have found that steadily warming oceans should translate to fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States.

The reason: As sea surface temperatures rise, vertical wind shear increases. And wind shear makes it difficult for storms to grow, which was seen in the past hurricane season, when several systems were stunted.

“Using data extending back to the middle 19th century, we found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. landfalling hurricanes when the global ocean is warmed up,” said Chunzai Wang, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sang-Ki Lee, a marine and atmospheric researcher at the University of Miami, worked with Wang on the study. Their findings are to be published today in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Wang and Lee’s conclusions would seem to contradict several other studies, which hold that global warming is increasing the intensity, duration and number of tropical systems.

Their study isn’t the first to proclaim that warmer oceans increase wind shear. Last April, another NOAA-backed study found an increase in greenhouse gases and warmer oceans also does so.

The main author of that study, Gabriel Vecchi, a NOAA research oceanographer, in December followed up with another paper that had a similar conclusion.

He and Brian Soden, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Miami, found that as the Atlantic basin becomes hotter, hurricane intensity likely won’t increase and might even deflate.

The Wang-Lee study, however, is the first to assert the increased wind shear should result in fewer hurricanes striking the U.S. coastline.

And it had another interesting twist: Wang, the lead author, said the steady warming of the Pacific and Indian oceans since the mid 1800s has increased wind shear over the Atlantic.

While wind shear is not the only factor that determines Atlantic hurricane activity, it’s an important one, said Wang, who is based at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami.

Earlier this month, NOAA said it found the global ocean temperature in 2007 was the ninth warmest on record, while the average temperature of all the land masses was the warmest on record.