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A New System?
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Monday, October 24, 2005
2:33:00 PM EDT
Hearing Wild Horses -- The Sundays
This is mildly ominous: Wilma's Rage Suggests New Hurricane Categories Needed:
In a season that has included three Category 5 hurricanes for the first time on record in the Atlantic Basin, scientists are beginning to wonder if their rating system is adequate, LiveScience has learned.
On the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, there is no Category 6. But Hurricane Wilma this week brushed up against where a 6 would be if the scale were logically extrapolated to include another category. And hurricanes are getting stronger, apparently fueled by global warming. Researchers expect that trend to continue.
Kerry Emanuel, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls the Saffir-Simpson scale irrational, in part because it deals only with wind. "I think the whole category system needs serious rethinking," Emanuel told LiveScience.
And if that's not enough to make you twitchy, consider this, from a Newsweek International interview with Janos Bogardi, director of the U.N. University's Institute for the Environment and Human Security:
MARGOLIS: Are natural disasters getting worse?
BOGARDI: There are absolutely clear signs and compelling statistics showing the situation is getting worse. We now are experiencing 2.5 to 3 times as many extreme events of climatic or water-related emergencies per year as we did in the 1970s. At the same time annual economic losses [from disasters] have increased sixfold.
What do you think? Are things getting worse, weatherwise? Or are people putting themselves in harms way more often by where they live? What do you think the next 20 years ro so hold for us? I'm interested in your speculations.
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2:33:00 PM EDT
Hearing Wild Horses -- The Sundays
A New System?
This is mildly ominous: Wilma's Rage Suggests New Hurricane Categories Needed:
In a season that has included three Category 5 hurricanes for the first time on record in the Atlantic Basin, scientists are beginning to wonder if their rating system is adequate, LiveScience has learned.
On the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, there is no Category 6. But Hurricane Wilma this week brushed up against where a 6 would be if the scale were logically extrapolated to include another category. And hurricanes are getting stronger, apparently fueled by global warming. Researchers expect that trend to continue.
Kerry Emanuel, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls the Saffir-Simpson scale irrational, in part because it deals only with wind. "I think the whole category system needs serious rethinking," Emanuel told LiveScience.
And if that's not enough to make you twitchy, consider this, from a Newsweek International interview with Janos Bogardi, director of the U.N. University's Institute for the Environment and Human Security:
MARGOLIS: Are natural disasters getting worse?
BOGARDI: There are absolutely clear signs and compelling statistics showing the situation is getting worse. We now are experiencing 2.5 to 3 times as many extreme events of climatic or water-related emergencies per year as we did in the 1970s. At the same time annual economic losses [from disasters] have increased sixfold.
What do you think? Are things getting worse, weatherwise? Or are people putting themselves in harms way more often by where they live? What do you think the next 20 years ro so hold for us? I'm interested in your speculations.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
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This entry has 6 comments: (Add your own)
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Weather and what we call natural disasters are what shape this planet over time (opps, should I be saying this to John Scalzi, author of A Rough Guide to the Universe)Well John ,yeah other things too, okay. On a small scale, a wind blows, a seed drops, a tree grows. A tree falls, it decays and gives nutrients to the ground. A single breathe, changes the chemistry of the air.Nature impacts us constantly and changes the earth in small un-noticable ways every second. Nano-biology is it called? Natural disasters seem to get their label from the amount of damage done to what humanity has created. I think weather and these so called disasters are probably cyclical and related.What we are experiencing now, may have taken place 1,000 's of years ago, before weather was being recorded. Bet the human eye never saw India coming towards Asia. It didn't just float there over night and I bet it had some help getting there. And it continues to move even now.
Sure add numbers onto the Saffir-Simpson scale and the Ricter scale too. Just cause your speedometer only goes up to 100 mph doesn't mean your car can't do 110. -
"My storm goes to eleven."
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I firmly believe that Mother Nature is fighting back against our many assaults on this eco-system. We have had horrible weather occurances that modern man has not seen...the tsunami, the earthquakes, the hurricanes...everything seems larger more potent than what has happened before. We cannot keep taking, we must give back to nature a bit, protect it....Sandi http://journals.aol.com/sdosc
her458/LIfeIsFullOfSurprises -
IMO People are living in areas that should not be populated by people. But, there is also the concern about how industrialization has effected out environment. I am hoping that these storm systems forces large nations (um... like ours) to promote conservation.
Well, one can dream.
:) Loretta
http://journals.aol.com/lrttklly/LupusLeftovers
10/25/05 11:35 PM