Claim that 30-m class telescopes will have resolution far superior to Hubble: true? This article makes the claim that the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT, number 4 in the list) will have resolution 10 times better than that of Hubble, while the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT, number 3 in the list) will have resolution 12 times better than that of Hubble.  These are claims I find impossible to believe.  

A simple application of, for instance, the Raleigh Criterion ($\theta = 1.22~\lambda/D$), where $\theta$ is the angular resolution of the telescope, $\lambda$ is the wavelength of the light in question, and $D$ is the diameter of the telescope, would show that a comparison between angular resolutions is as simple as comparing the diameters of the telescope apertures.  Hubble's mirror is 2.4 m; comparing with the 24.5 m GMT and the 30 m TMT we see that the GMT will have 10.2 times the angular resolution of Hubble, while the TMT will have 12.5 times the angular resolution of Hubble.  I think a calculation similar to the one I have described is how the article linked above came up with the numbers they did about the angular resolution of these telescopes compared to Hubble. 

However, the Raleigh criterion only applies to telescopes working at their diffraction limit.  Space telescopes (if they're designed well and built correctly) can work close to the diffraction limit (maybe even at the diffraction limit).  Ground-based telescopes, however, are limited in angular resolution by the atmosphere, which at best will limit resolution to about an arc-second at the best sites on Earth. Thus the GMT and TMT by themselves will not have better image resolution than Hubble.

My question, then, is whether this article is correct (possibly because of one of the reasons I list below) or whether it seems this article naively applied the Raleigh Criterion for angular resolution with no thought about how the atmosphere will affect the resolving capabilities of these large ground-based telescopes.

Possible reasons the article may still be correct:


Adaptive optics, a developing technology which can allow telescopes to correct for distortions to the image produced by the atmosphere.  Perhaps GMT and TMT will have very fancy adaptive optics systems.
Another technique, such as speckle imaging or lucky imaging.
Article could be referring to spectral resolution, rather than angular resolution (or image resolution).  However, obtaining good spectral resolution is as much the job of the spectral instrument as it is of the telescope so I don't consider "spectral resolution" to be an inherent property of a telescope.
Adaptive optics, as it says on the GMT website:


  One of the most sophisticated engineering aspects of the telescope is
  what is known as “adaptive optics.” The telescope’s secondary mirrors
  are actually flexible. Under each secondary mirror surface, there are
  hundreds of actuators that will constantly adjust the mirrors to
  counteract atmospheric turbulence. These actuators, controlled by
  advanced computers, will transform twinkling stars into clear steady
  points of light. It is in this way that the GMT will offer images that
  are 10 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.


and on the TMT web site:


  In addition to providing nine times the collecting area of the current
  largest optical/infrared telescopes (the 10-meter Keck Telescopes),
  TMT will be used with adaptive optics systems to allow
  diffraction-limited performance, i.e., the best that the optics of the
  system can theoretically provide. This will provide unparalleled
  high-sensitivity spatial resolution more than 12 times sharper than
  what is achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope. For many applications,
  diffraction-limited observations give gains in sensitivity that scale
  like the diameter of the mirror to the fourth power, so this increase
  in size has major implications.