Probing the Power of Pacific Supertyphoons
Despite higher than normal surface temperatures and heat contents of ocean waters where the storms developed, evidence is lacking that global warming is revving them up.
By Tim Hornyak 10 July 2017
Typhoon Meranti blasted the western Pacific in 2016, wreaking havoc in the Philippines, Taiwan, and mainland China, leaving dozens dead or missing and doing billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Meranti is among some unusually ferocious Pacific storms in the past few years that seem to be in a category of their own, according to researchers who recently presented data quantifying such storms’ extraordinary power and conditions of formation.
On top of bringing heavy rainfall and storm surges, the intensity of these recent tempests goes so far beyond what was previously thought to be the peak range of cyclone power that the researchers argued that they require a new level, a category 6, on a widely used rating scale for hurricanes and typhoons.
https://eos.org/articles/probing-the-power-of-pacific-supertyphoons
