In a warming world, climate scientists consider category 6 hurricanes sciencedaily.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sciencedaily.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As climate change is causing more intense storms, a new study is suggesting that the five-scale system by which the potential damage caused by hurricanes is gauged should be revised to include a sixth category.
Increasing ocean temperatures contribute to ever more intense hurricanes, climate scientists Michael Wehner and James Kossin wondered whether the open-ended Category 5 is sufficient to communicate the risk of hurricane damage.
For more than 50 years, the National Hurricane Center has used the Saffir-Simpson Windscale to communicate the risk of property damage; it labels a hurricane on a scale from Category 1 (wind speeds between 74 – 95 mph) to Category 5 (wind speeds of 158 mph or greater).