Hurricanes have become so strong that they need a new category

Because of global warming, hurricanes have become so strong that they require the sixth category on a five-point scale. American scientists Michael Wechner and James Kossin proposed to introduce a new category.

Researchers recommend classifying hurricanes with a wind speed of 309 kilometers per hour or more into the sixth category. Now they are included in the fifth category on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which begins with a wind speed of 252 kilometers per hour.

Over the past decade, scientists have discovered five megahurricanes that could receive a sixth category. Among them are Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than six thousand people in the Philippines in 2013, and Hurricane Patricia, whose maximum speed reached 346 kilometers when it formed near Mexico in 2015.

The researchers also noted that, although the number of storms due to global warming does not increase, their intensity increases. This is due to the fact that the overheated ocean provides additional energy for the rapid strengthening of hurricanes.

“Our main goal is to draw attention to the fact that climate change affects the strongest hurricanes,” said Wechner.

Steady weather changes have already led to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology adding purple to its maps to indicate extreme heat, and the US introducing three new categories of warnings about the growing heat stress corals are experiencing.

• 2023 became the warmest in recorded history: world temperature records were broken one after another. UN meteorologists associate the record heat with anthropogenic climate change and the beginning of El Niño – an increase in the temperature of the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean. High temperatures lead to the death of people, animals and plants, contribute to the spread of droughts and forest fires.