The Know Daily - Tuesday 6 February 2024

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After nine years of construction, a state-of-the-art telescope in Chile is set to offer the “best view yet” of the universe, said The Guardian. The $1.9bn Vera C Rubin Observatory, located in the Chilean desert, aims to capture an “unprecedented amount of astronomical data” over the next decade - and the futuristic building is also pretty spectacular.👇

🌬️ Winds of change 

Hurricanes are becoming so strong that we may need a new scale to rate them, a new study has found.

What’s the story?
At present, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in the US uses the Saffir-Simpson scale to categorise the severity of storms on a scale from 1 to 5, according to their wind speeds.

The scale was devised in the 1970s - but two leading researchers have now said that, given the increasing severity of storms, a new “category 6” is needed. 

Why are hurricanes getting worse?
The short answer is climate change.

The longer answer is that although the total number of hurricanes is not increasing due to the climate crisis, their intensity is. “A super-heated ocean is providing extra energy to rapidly intensify hurricanes, aided by a warmer, moisture-laden atmosphere,” explained The Guardian.

Got it. So what would this “category 6” look like?
It would include all hurricanes with sustained winds of 192mph or more, said researchers. Five storms would have fallen into this category over the past decade - with four of these typhoons affecting Asia, noted The Conversation. 

Just how useful would this new scale be?
In a somewhat surprising twist, the scientists behind the idea don’t actually think it would be that useful.

Instead, they would rather the NHC introduce an entirely new system that better conveys the overall risk posed by hurricanes, said the New Scientist. This wouldn’t just take into account wind speeds, but also things like the risk of flooding and damage.

However, they hope that the introduction of a category 6 would raise awareness of how climate change is impacting the most intense storms.