In Past Decade, Hurricane Intensity Hit New Records In Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean Basins
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The Atlantic Basin. The Atlantic region—which encompasses the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico as well as the open Atlantic north of the equator—is the best studied hurricane basin on Earth, thanks to the work of the Miami-basedNational Hurricane Center. And here, a particularly breathtaking hurricane intensity record came during the devastating 2005 season with Hurricane Wilma, whose minimum central pressure plummeted to a stunning 882 millibars, the lowest ever measured in this basin, on October 19. Atmospheric pressure is one key way of measuring hurricane strength because air rushes inward toward regions of low pressure, meaning that lower pressures generally lead to higher wind speeds. Indeed, when Wilma hit 882 millibars, the National Climatic Data Center quickly pronounced the storm ”the most intense hurricane on record in the Atlantic.”
And that’s not Wilma’s only record. On its way to Category 5 strength, Wilma also had a rate of intensification that was off the charts. As the Hurricane Center writes: “Wilma’s deepening rate over the northwestern Caribbean Sea, from late on 18 October to early on 19 October, was incredible.” The storm’s 6-hour, 12-hour, and 24-hour pressure drops were “by far the largest in the available records for these periods going back to 1851.” Basically, Wilma went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just 24 hours. All of that said, Wilma didn’t set this basin’s record for wind speed. The record is shared by 1969′s Hurricane Camille and 1980′s Hurricane Allen, both of which had maximum sustained winds of 190 miles per hour.
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In the South Pacific, it’s pretty clear that the strongest storm on record has occurred since the year 2000, although there’s a virtual tie between two storms: 2002-2003′s Cyclone Zoe, which devastated the small Pacific island of Tikopia, and Cyclone Monica, which struck Australia’s Northern Territory in April 2006. Estimates vary across different forecasting agencies on the strength of these two storms (something all too common once you venture outside of the Atlantic region). But if you trust the Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), then both had maximum winds of nearly 180 miles per hour. In addition, Zoe had a minimum central pressure of 890 millibars, according to forecasters at the Fiji Meteorological Service.
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In 2006, Hurricane Ioke rampaged across the Central Pacific and traveled all the way into the Western North Pacific, where it was officially pronounced a typhoon (which is simply what hurricanes are called in this region). According to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, Ioke had “the lowest estimated surface pressure for any hurricane within the central Pacific” at 900 millibars, and it set another stunning record to boot. Ioke lasted at Category 4 strength, or higher, for 198 hours straight, “the longest continuous time period at that intensity observed for any tropical cyclone anywhere on earth.” If you define hurricane intensity as the total amount of time spent as a very strong storm, then Ioke beats all the rest.
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http://climatedesk.org/2013/11/all-over-the-world-hurricane-records-keep-breaking/