2024-02-05 20:00:00
Researchers suggest adding a sixth category to the Saffir-Simpson scale, with tropical cyclones becoming more powerful with global warming.
Has the Saffir-Simpson scale become obsolete? Since the early 1970s, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) has used it to classify tropical cyclones based on their intensity and the damage they can cause. In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Pnas), two American researchers note that in the light of global warming, this scale which goes from 1 (less powerful) to 5 (more powerful) no longer reflects the potential dangerousness of increasingly powerful hurricanes, and they propose to move up scale up to 6.
Originally, “this scale was designed to estimate the expected damage to structures, relates Jim Kossin, co-author of the study. Herb Saffir was a civil engineer specializing in construction and materials ; Bob Simpson, meteorologist and former director of the National Hurricane Center. Together, they created a scale taking into account different speeds…
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