Category 5 Cyclone Frequency and Climate Change? Evacuations are underway in the Philippines Islands as extremely dangerous Category 5 Super Typhoon Haiyan heads towards the islands. Haiyan became a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds at 12 UTC (7 am EDT) Wednesday. Haiyan became a Cat 5 at an unusually low latitude (7.9°N), but this is not a record. The most southerly Cat 5 on record was Super Typhoon Louise of 1964 (7.3°N), followed by 2012s Super Typhoon Bopha (7.4°N.) Haiyan is the fourth Category 5 storm in the Western Pacific and fifth on Earth so far in 2013. This is the highest number of Cat 5s since 2009, which had four Cat 5s in the Western Pacific and one in the Eastern Pacific. Since 2000, Earth has averaged 4.4 of these mightiest of tropical cyclones per year. The record for Cat 5s in a year is twelve, set in 1997, when an astonishing ten Cat 5s occurred in the Western Pacific. The Atlantic has not had a Category 5 storm since Hurricane Felix of 2007, making the past six years the longest stretch without a Cat 5 since 1981 - 1987. Solar output has declined since 1997 and the eleven year solar max that we are in the middle of is a real dud this year... and solar output is declining overall in a larger hundred-year cycle and this is masking the green house effect and climate change. While this is fortunate in the short-term, climate change nay-sayers will use this as evidence for their cause (not even looking at the clear solar data). The greenhouse warming will still be there only supressed... it will unfortunately return with a real vengeance.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 20:23:31 +0000
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