Wake up babe new category of storm based on the Saffir-Simpson scale just dropped... Seriously though, this is some serious shit: And the article does make a good point: What was considered...
Wake up babe new category of storm based on the Saffir-Simpson scale just dropped...
Seriously though, this is some serious shit:
A roughly 12% increase in wind speed is observed per degree C of warming (roughly the warming the tropical oceans have experienced over the past century) for the strongest (upper decile in intensity) hurricanes. That translates to a roughly 40% increase in destructive potential as measured by PD.
And the article does make a good point:
Robert Simpson, coinventor of the scale, once argued that (10) there was no reason to define a higher category than 5 because the damage that can be done saturates at that level: “...when you get up into winds in excess of 155 mph (249 km/h) you have enough damage if that extreme wind sustains itself for as much as 6 s on a building it’s going to cause rupturing damages that are serious no matter how well it’s engineered.” It is possible that argument was once valid, but it is not today thanks to technological progress and more resilient infrastructure
What was considered destructive-force winds to buildings in 1971 is not the same as today, given all the technological advances that have happened since then (especially after 1992). Adding another category to the scale seems logical based on that.
Related article: "Hurricanes Are Too Fast for Category 5". The Atlantic. This article from The Atlantic argues that wind speed is actually a rather poor proxy when calculating potential damage...
This article from The Atlantic argues that wind speed is actually a rather poor proxy when calculating potential damage from hurricanes, with some scientists even suggesting that the Saffir–Simpson scale was a mistake (as it creates a false sense of security). The most destructive hurricanes don't cause tremendous damage by their powerful winds, but rather through heavy rain and an unusually high storm surge. Hurricane Katrina, the costliest hurricane in history (~$125 billion in economic damage), was only a category 3 hurricane when it made landfall.
Agree 100%. As someone who lives in a hurricane-prone area and is morbidly fascinated in reading about environmental disasters around the world, flooding is pretty much always the real killer in...
Agree 100%. As someone who lives in a hurricane-prone area and is morbidly fascinated in reading about environmental disasters around the world, flooding is pretty much always the real killer in these powerful storms. Don't get me wrong, Category 5 winds are still terrifying, but buildings today are generally built to withstand anything short of a direct hit. There'll be damage, sure, but nothing like you get with storm surges and increased rainfalls.
And unfortunately it's not just hurricanes and other tropical cyclones either. All around the globe there are places dealing with freak rainfall events where an entire year's worth of rain falls in like 24-48 hours. Would be nice to shift the perspective from wind-related ratings to a flooding-potential-related one, but I'm not sure how that could even be calculated. Wind seems a lot easier to quantify, whereas flooding can be caused or exacerbated by a variety of factors.
Just experienced the “atmospheric river” that flowed across Southern California. Having grown up there it was the most rain I’ve ever seen there in my life (the historic record rainfall measured...
Just experienced the “atmospheric river” that flowed across Southern California. Having grown up there it was the most rain I’ve ever seen there in my life (the historic record rainfall measured in downtown LA confirms this).
It made me painfully aware of how unequipped the paved sprawl is to handle any significant rainfall (and how inexperienced many LA drivers are for flood-like conditions).
Generally climate change will make SoCal dryer, but maybe it will also make rain events more intense and clustered. My friend who lives there said he had never heard of an atmospheric river before and now he had experienced it twice in a month.
Winds toppled down trees, but weren’t even that intense (20-30mph at worst). It’s a mixture of saturated soil and shallow roots, perhaps, but I think I agree with the premise that the flooding is worse than the wind.
They do touch on that in the article and link out to a study on another perspective model, but from a purely practical stand point I don't know that it'll ever get off the ground, or at least any...
They do touch on that in the article and link out to a study on another perspective model, but from a purely practical stand point I don't know that it'll ever get off the ground, or at least any time in the next generation or two. The US hasn't managed to convert to the metric system, I'm hard pressed to imagine all the things that would have to align for us to completely revamp the way storms are measured and communicated, especially with the current social/political climate and if the main driver is "climate change is making storms worse" which immediately gets a third of the population knee jerk rejecting anything after that. It objectively makes sense to update our terminology, it's just one of those things I think inertia and societal quirks prevent from ever actually happening.
Wake up babe new category of storm based on the Saffir-Simpson scale just dropped...
Seriously though, this is some serious shit:
And the article does make a good point:
What was considered destructive-force winds to buildings in 1971 is not the same as today, given all the technological advances that have happened since then (especially after 1992). Adding another category to the scale seems logical based on that.
Related article:
This article from The Atlantic argues that wind speed is actually a rather poor proxy when calculating potential damage from hurricanes, with some scientists even suggesting that the Saffir–Simpson scale was a mistake (as it creates a false sense of security). The most destructive hurricanes don't cause tremendous damage by their powerful winds, but rather through heavy rain and an unusually high storm surge. Hurricane Katrina, the costliest hurricane in history (~$125 billion in economic damage), was only a category 3 hurricane when it made landfall.
Agree 100%. As someone who lives in a hurricane-prone area and is morbidly fascinated in reading about environmental disasters around the world, flooding is pretty much always the real killer in these powerful storms. Don't get me wrong, Category 5 winds are still terrifying, but buildings today are generally built to withstand anything short of a direct hit. There'll be damage, sure, but nothing like you get with storm surges and increased rainfalls.
And unfortunately it's not just hurricanes and other tropical cyclones either. All around the globe there are places dealing with freak rainfall events where an entire year's worth of rain falls in like 24-48 hours. Would be nice to shift the perspective from wind-related ratings to a flooding-potential-related one, but I'm not sure how that could even be calculated. Wind seems a lot easier to quantify, whereas flooding can be caused or exacerbated by a variety of factors.
Just experienced the “atmospheric river” that flowed across Southern California. Having grown up there it was the most rain I’ve ever seen there in my life (the historic record rainfall measured in downtown LA confirms this).
It made me painfully aware of how unequipped the paved sprawl is to handle any significant rainfall (and how inexperienced many LA drivers are for flood-like conditions).
Generally climate change will make SoCal dryer, but maybe it will also make rain events more intense and clustered. My friend who lives there said he had never heard of an atmospheric river before and now he had experienced it twice in a month.
Winds toppled down trees, but weren’t even that intense (20-30mph at worst). It’s a mixture of saturated soil and shallow roots, perhaps, but I think I agree with the premise that the flooding is worse than the wind.
They do touch on that in the article and link out to a study on another perspective model, but from a purely practical stand point I don't know that it'll ever get off the ground, or at least any time in the next generation or two. The US hasn't managed to convert to the metric system, I'm hard pressed to imagine all the things that would have to align for us to completely revamp the way storms are measured and communicated, especially with the current social/political climate and if the main driver is "climate change is making storms worse" which immediately gets a third of the population knee jerk rejecting anything after that. It objectively makes sense to update our terminology, it's just one of those things I think inertia and societal quirks prevent from ever actually happening.