On Earth, due to climate change, hurricanes may occur so powerful that a new category will have to be introduced to classify such disasters. American climatologists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reached this conclusion. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The current Saffir-Simpson tornado scale includes five categories: from 1 (33-42 m/s) to 5 (more than 70 m/s).
Lawrence Laboratory scientists presented a hypothetical Category 6 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which would include storms with winds greater than 85 meters per second.
“Our goal is to rethink how the openness of the Saffir-Simpson scale can lead to underestimation of risk, and especially how this underestimation becomes increasingly problematic in a warming environment,” said Michael Wehner, one of the authors of the scientific study.
Climatologists noted that anthropogenic global warming is causing a significant increase in ocean surface temperatures of tropospheric air in regions where hurricanes, tropical cyclones, and typhoons occur.
The team analyzed historical hurricane data from 1980 to 2021 and found five hurricanes that could be classified as Category 6, all of which occurred in the last nine years.
Researchers also ran simulations to see how a warming climate would affect the intensity of hurricanes. Their models showed that with global warming of 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the risk of Category 6 storms increases by 50% near the Philippines and doubles in the Gulf of Mexico.
Previous scientists I learnedThe Earth may have passed a critical warming threshold 14 years ago.