Global warming to necessitate Category 6 designation?

[jimvb]

Maybe the public would be confused by a Category 6, and maybe for the public the limit should be Category 5, but one can compute how strong a Category 6 winds would be. And categories can be used for tropical storms as well. This is a table I came up with a while ago on Storm2k:

37 43 Category 1 Tropical Storm
44 52 Category 2 Tropical Storm
53 62 Category 3 Tropical Storm
63 75 Category 4 Tropical Storm
76 90 Category 1 Hurricane
91 108 Category 2 Hurricane
109 130 Category 3 Hurricane
131 156 Category 4 Hurricane
157 187 Category 5 Hurricane
188 224 Category 6 Hurricane
225 268 Category 7 Hurricane
269 321 Category 8 Hurricane
322 NoLimit Inconceivable Hurricane

I stopped at Category 8 because no storm has ever been recorded with winds higher than 318 mph. But one could go farther and say that a Category 9 would have winds of 323-385 mph or something of that sort. Categories 9-14 might be used to measure wind speeds on Jupiter or Saturn.

But note that one can define categories on tropical storms as well. The Beaufort Scale can be thought of as a bases for these. This means that a Category 1 tropical Storm would be a Gale Storm, Category 2 would be a Strong Gale Storm, Category 3 would be a Whole Gale Storm, and Category 4 would be a Storm Storm. There are big differences between Category 1 and Category 4 Tropical Storms, but the NHC continues to call them all by the label "tropical storm".

[KWT]

I personally think you should create two types of category-5.

Like cat-5a for the Isabels and your low end cat-5's, then have a cat-5b for your Wilma's, Rita's and Katrina's.

I'd have hurricane at 175mph or above a cat-5b.

[jimvb]

When you get to strong storms such as Category 5 storms, one would like to group these storms together, since there are not many of them, instead of breaking them down into subdivisions. That's why the NHC does not have a Category 6, or a Category 5 1/2, which is essentially what you are suggesting. That is also one reason why I use an exponential or logarithmic scale for my categories instead of a linear scale.

However, I would like to subdivide the weaker storms, since they are more common. That is why I invented 4 categories of tropical storms. These categories do express substantial differences. For example, for us, here in central Virginia, Fran and Floyd were Category 3 tropical storms, and I did not see that much tree damage. Isabel was Category 4, and there were lots of trees down with that.

[MiamiensisWx]

CVW, GW is a political juggernaut, like it or not. I respect your and everyone's opinion on GW. Like I have stated on many occasion, I believe the Earth is warming but it is a natural cycle. Hence, I do not believe the AGW argument. Yes, my reasons are political but we can't discuss the political cause and effect here on S2K. I am just sick and tired of nearly every cause on bad weather tied to GW when it is not.........MGC

I respect your opinion as well, and I do believe that it is overwhelmingly mostly a natural cycle, with a very slight (key word is SLIGHT) man-made global warming occurring. I am also sick of the media associating nearly every rough or unusual weather activity due to global warming as well. I just disagree with that you don't believe in ANY man-made global warming, which I think is a bit unreasonable; however, it is just my opinion. That's all.

[patsmsg]

and the author has lied

Yes. Apparently he is using this forum to spread his politically derived rhetoric.

There is no need to change the Saffir-Simpson scale to include a category 6.
Anything above category 4 is category 5, and that works just fine.

I will admit that I have never liked the ranges used by Saffir-Simpson. They are not easily remembered. The categories span ranges of 21, 14, 20, and 24 mph going from cat 1 through cat 4.

I know it was designed to reflect anticipated damage, but I don't think just a couple mph would make that much difference in overall utility of the scale. If I had designed it, I may have used:

Cat 1 - 75 (change of 1 MPH)
Cat 2 - 95 (change of 1 MPH)
Cat 3 - 115 (change of 4 mph)
Cat 4 - 135 (change of 4 mph)
Cat 5 - 155+

Much easier to remember, but hey the world isn't perfect. For all I know it was all designed and IS easily remembered based on knots rather than mph and the conversion messes it all up. I'm not going to take the time to figure that out. It's not worth it really. It works as it is.

Everybody relax on the global warming. Try to conserve, but relax. ..and prepare for another bad season this year.

[MiamiensisWx]

I don't see any point in doing this.

I completely agree. We shouldn't change the scale. Leave it the way it is.

[patsmsg]

37 43 Category 1 Tropical Storm
44 52 Category 2 Tropical Storm
53 62 Category 3 Tropical Storm
63 75 Category 4 Tropical Storm
76 90 Category 1 Hurricane
91 108 Category 2 Hurricane
109 130 Category 3 Hurricane
131 156 Category 4 Hurricane
157 187 Category 5 Hurricane
188 224 Category 6 Hurricane
225 268 Category 7 Hurricane
269 321 Category 8 Hurricane
322 NoLimit Inconceivable Hurricane
.

I hope you are kidding. What kind of scale is this? Is it based on damage estimates? It looks like random numbers to me. Quick ...without looking...what's the wind speed range for a category 6 hurricane using this scale?

[dhweather]

There is no point in this.

The SS scale tells you that a 5 will destroy everything - why bother with a 6?

There needs to be more emphasis and better forecasting on storm surge,
and people need to understand that cat 3 SUSTAINED winds will really mess
your day up.

[MiamiensisWx]

There is no point in this.

The SS scale tells you that a 5 will destroy everything - why bother with a 6?

There needs to be more emphasis and better forecasting on storm surge,
and people need to understand that cat 3 SUSTAINED winds will really mess
your day up.

I agree. Good post.

[Terrell]

Yea....what would Cat 6 be? "Totally Obliterrated"?

Even at Cat 3 there were some things that Katrina totally obliterated. Don't even want to think of what she could have done if she came ashore as a Cat 5, no real need for a cat 6 or higher IMO.

[SouthFloridawx]

Unless we start getting hurricanes with winds in excess of 200 mph sustained, there is no reason to upgrade the current SS scale to include a catagory six. The SS scale has been taught to pretty much everyone through the education system and it pretty well known throughout the US. As someone else pointed out that the prediction of storm surge needs to be improved upon. Instead of trying to improve on an already good SS scale people need to be more worried about stressing preparation for the coming season.

[Jack8631]

There is no point in this.

The SS scale tells you that a 5 will destroy everything - why bother with a 6?

There needs to be more emphasis and better forecasting on storm surge,
and people need to understand that cat 3 SUSTAINED winds will really mess
your day up.

Indeed. Too much emphasis is placed on wind speed. I feel that we need to incorporate more information from storm surge research into the Saffir-Simpson scale instead of just adding a category that essentially does nothing for storm prediction and preparation.

[jimvb]

Patsmsg, to explain how I got my extended scale, I started with the Saffir-Simpson Scale:

1 74 95
2 96 110
3 111 130
4 131 155
5 156 infinite

and I drew a least-squares fit through the midpoints of the averages, that is, through:

0.5 74.5
1.5 95.5
2.5 110.5
3.5 130.5
4.5 155.5

Wind speeds are felt logarithmically. That is, a 2 mph increase at 10 mph is like a 4 mph increase at 20 mph. So I used the formula y = A*10^bx, where A and b are constants to be found. To do this, take the logs of all the wind speeds and do an ordinary least-squares fit on that. The formula I got was:

Wind speed = 69.957 * 1.1969^(Saffir-Simpson Index)

Or one can round it off to 70 *(1.2^x).

I then made a table based on this. For example, for Category 3, I found the wind speeds for Categories 2.5 and 3.5 and used those as the limits. This enabled me to extend the scale to Categories 6, 7, and so forth for any positive integer, but since Category 9 exceeds the fastest wind speeds ever recorded on Earth, I stopped at 8.

What I found useful were Categories 0, -1, -2, and -3. These give four categories of tropical storms, corresponding closely to Beaufort scale ratings 8-11.

You say these numbers are not easily conceived. So one way out is to use the Beaufort scale for tropical storms and the standard Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes. The result is:

-3 39 46 Category 1 Tropical Storm (Gale)
-2 47 54 Category 2 Tropical Storm (Strong Gale)
-1 55 63 Category 3 Tropical Storm (Whole Gale)
0 64 73 Category 4 Tropical Storm (Storm)
1 74 95 Category 1 Hurricane
2 96 110 Category 2 Hurricane
3 111 130 Category 3 Hurricane
4 131 155 Category 4 Hurricane
5 156 185 Category 5 Hurricane
6 186 225 Category 6 Hurricane
7 226 270 Category 7 Hurricane
8 271 320 Category 8 Hurricane
9 321 NoLimit Inconceivable Hurricane

I've modified Categories 6-9 as well. This does not differ too much from my earlier, calculated scale. So I offer it as a possibility for an extended SS scale, especially the categories of tropical storms.

[Recurve]

Here it comes on Sunday night on NBC: "Category 10: The End of the Cosmos"

[Audrey2Katrina]

Cat 10: Jupiter's Red Spot!

A2K

[jimvb]

"Category 10: The End of the Cosmos" does not Google. Sounds like an attempt to outhype the hypermedia, although it's hard to outhype NBC after they showed "10.5 Apocalypse", which says the Great Supercontinent Pangaea will come together again in a period of only weeks or years.

[Stratusxpeye]

"Category 10: The End of the Cosmos" does not Google. Sounds like an attempt to outhype the hypermedia, although it's hard to outhype NBC after they showed "10.5 Apocalypse", which says the Great Supercontinent Pangaea will come together again in a period of only weeks or years.

Was that show worth watching? I have it recorder on hdtv dvr but havent seen in yet. Dont have much time.

[dixiebreeze]

I think we've pretty much demonstrated that the studies used to make the assumption that Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes are on the rise have been debunked due to methodology issues and/or an outright artificial reduction applied to the post 1970 dataset by one of these researchers.

To me this is yet another attempt to get Global Warming on the front page and link it to something people worry about. Is it a coincidence that this article was put out the day before the NOAA hurricane outlook was released? Is ther any real news or science beyond the opinion of Greg Holland on that article? No.

In fact, and I don't know much about print media nor did I write for my school paper, the article references "some scientists" twice to draw conclusions, neither reference is to Greg Holland directly. So who are these scientists?

It seems more like an op-ed piece disguised as news.

But then again nobody really cares if articles about science actually have any real science in them, right?

MW

You're right Mike. I know plenty about the print media and "global warming" is totally a political ploy. Some years from now, some politician will be on the bandwagon about an imminent "ice age." What a lot of malarky.

[x-y-no]

You're right Mike. I know plenty about the print media and "global warming" is totally a political ploy. Some years from now, some politician will be on the bandwagon about an imminent "ice age." What a lot of malarky.

Here we go again ...

This kind of blatantly political declaration is specifically forbidden by the rules of this site (for good reason). If you wish to discuss the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming without making it political I'm happy to do so in the global weather forum.

[MiamiensisWx]

Here we go again ...

This kind of blatantly political declaration is specifically forbidden by the rules of this site (for good reason). If you wish to discuss the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming without making it political I'm happy to do so in the global weather forum.

I totally agree, Jan!