Like global temperatures continues to increase creating storms busierSome researchers say the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures a hurricane’s wind speed, does not adequately address the dangers associated with extreme storms. In a new study, scientists explored a hypothetical expansion of the scale to include Category 6 and found that such a designation could help people focus on worsening risks.
In a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that the scale, created in the early 1970s and still used to describe hurricane categoriesIt has one “weakness”: it tops Category 5, despite “the destructive potential of wind increasing exponentially.”
Hurricane categories range from 1 to 5; Category 5 hurricanes have wind speeds of 156 mph or stronger; This is enough to cause “catastrophic” damage, which NOAA says could lead to “complete roof collapse on many residential and industrial buildings.” such as long-term power outages.
Michael Wehner, the lead author of the latest study, told CBS News that there have been a number of tornadoes in recent years with wind speeds exceeding 156 miles per hour, which may require complete elimination. new category. To help better inform people on this issue, he and his co-researcher, James Kossin, looked at the potential impact of capping Category 5 at wind speeds of 300 km per hour and expanding the scale so that hurricanes or tornadoes above that would be designated as Category 6. risks.
“We’ve seen five storms exceed this hypothetical Category 6, and they’re all new since 2013,” Wehner told CBS News.
The strongest of these five storms Hurricane PatriciaThe storm peaked with wind speeds over 200 miles per hour before making landfall in Mexico as a Category 4 in October 2015. According to the National Hurricane Center, Patricia “intensified at a rate rarely observed in a tropical cyclone.” NOAA reported that the storm hit winds of 215 mph, about 60 mph faster than the lower end of the Category 5 designation.
Other storms of hypothetical Category 6 intensity occurred in the Western Pacific, the study says. typhoon HaiyanThe study says the storm that hit the Philippines in 2013 was “the costliest and deadliest Philippine storm since the 19th century, long before any significant warning system.”
The researchers also looked at a “state-of-the-art” climate measurement system that analyzed potential intensity — “basically a speed limit on how fast peak winds could be in a perfect storm,” Wehner said.
“Our motivation here was to establish the connection between them. climate change — warming of the atmosphere and the earth, from the burning of fossil fuels to hurricanes and tropical cyclones,” Wehner said, adding that he and Kossin consider themselves “relatively conservative climate scientists.”
“As climate change increases temperature and humidity, which are the energy sources for a hurricane or tropical cyclone, this speed limit can also be expected to increase,” he said. “And indeed it is.”
Wehner and Kossin observed a “significant” increase in wind speeds since 1982 and said in their study that wind speed records “will continue to be broken as the planet continues to warm.”
They also ran simulations based on various global warming scenarios and found that the risk of seeing Category 6 storms “has increased significantly and will continue to increase with climate change.”
This study is not the first to look at a hypothetical study. Expansion of the Saffir-Simpson scale. In 2019, former NOAA hurricane hunter and meteorologist Jeff Masters wrote that current hurricane classifications are “inadequate.” He suggested expanding the scale with a Category 6 starting with winds of 180 to 185 mph and a Category 7 to be used for storms with winds of at least 210 mph.
“Any move to expand the Saffir-Simpson scale would have to come from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), and there is little support for such a move from experts there,” he wrote in a blog post for Scientific American. “From a public safety/alert standpoint, from what I have heard NHC experts believe that since a category 5 hurricane is already considered a disaster, including a category 6 would not do much good.”
Wehner admitted Saffir-Simpson scale It has been heavily criticized for being the sole determinant of a hurricane’s category. The scale is based solely on wind speed, and while this is a crucial metric for determining the risk of a storm, it does not take into account the potential destruction caused by the size of the storm or the storm surge and flooding it can bring. Wehner’s study does not address other hurricane factors.
Wehner said these hurricane risks need to be better included when explaining storm risk.
“If you’re in the path, a single number isn’t really very descriptive of the entire risk of an impending hurricane,” he told CBS News. “You really need to know what kind of dangers you are exposed to.”
The researchers said in their paper that they were not specifically recommending changes to the scale, but were trying to “raise awareness that the risk of wind hazards from storms currently designated as category 5 has increased and will continue to increase.” They said adding a sixth category to the scale could help raise awareness of expected changes in wind power from storms in coming years and how that could impact communities, among other hazards.
“The stronger the wind, the stronger the storm surge. And there’s going to be a lot more rain no matter what,” Wehner said. “…From the context of global warming, we think that scale is good when we’re trying to put a single number on what the increased risk is from global warming, which is the longer-term danger.”
Another criticism Wehner received regarding the scale-up was, “If we add Cat 6, wouldn’t the Cat 3 storm no longer matter?” was the question.
“And the answer is: ‘Of course it is,'” he said. “…Just because the worst storms are worse doesn’t mean bad storms aren’t bad.”
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