Question : Are super hurricane's possible?

[arcticfire]

I know odd time to bring this up with Ivan and all but watching Ivan grow over the past week and learning more and more about hurricanes has brought this question to my mind and I would like some more educated opinons on the subject.

From what I understand hurricanes basicly transfer energy from the equator poleward. So the idea of a super hurricane (ala something similar to what you see on like Jupiter) would not really be possible unless the poleward sides of the earth where themselves hot enough to sustain a hurricane. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Also from what little I understand about Jovian storms what keeps them so big and long lasting is basicly they never actually get rid of the energy they are packing (it evaporates back up into the storm before hitting the ground). So in effect the hurricane would also need to be in an environment that is so hot undernieth it that the water never gets back to ground level. Again correct me if I'm wrong.

So the only means I can really see for a true super hurricane to develope in the fashion the earths systems would allow at all (since we don't have the self evaporating rain thing like Jupiter) would be if a cane managed to basicly develope right off the shores of Africa , travel almost totally westward crossing the central america area at it's really narrow area and sail west into Asia. Even then the Pacific as I understand it is not nearly as hurricane friendly as the atlantic. So from what I can deduce it would be impossible basicly for a hurricane to manage to go around the entire globe like the Jovian ones do. Since even if the freak above situation happened and it never went northward , never had any big shear and happily plowed threw tons of warm water almost the whole way , eventually it would smack right into Asia and be dismatled no matter how big it was.

So from what I can tell the only way we will get any hurricanes that truly just plow a path of total destruction would be if we got the planet so hot rain couldn't manage to escape the cane.

So I would like some other opinons on what factors or situations would need to happen for a cane that would be something like 4x-6x the size of Ivan to apear. I ask this only out of curiosity not out of any desire to see it happen.

[Downdraft]

Not possible in the Atlantic basin. CAT 5 hurricanes are pretty rare in this basin. Of course, typhoons get larger than Atlantic hurricanes. They have more ocean area to support development and travel and things like updwelling don't hinder them. If the earth heated to the point your talking about the hurricane itself would be the least of our problems.