Due to rising temperatures, storms are becoming more frequent and violent. The consequence is that scientists are considering adding another category to those already present to identify the most intense and destructive ones.
The National Hurricane Center, which monitors and issues warnings about hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, has been using the Saffir-Simpson scale to measure their intensity since 1969. The scale consists of five categories that measure the wind speed and the intensity of the damage that these meteorological phenomena can cause.
They range from category 1, with wind speeds of 119 to 153 km/h, to category 5, with gusts of 252 km/h. However, rising ocean temperatures, with increasingly violent and destructive hurricanes, highlighted the possibility that category 5 was no longer sufficient. In fact, a hypothetical category 6 would already include as many as five hurricanes that have occurred in the last nine years. Such a category includes winds in excess of 300 km/h.
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