| Not sure if anyone saw this, I certainly had not. Scientists awarded patent for new hurricane intensity scale David Hawkins dhawkins@keysreporter.com Posted - Friday, August 05, 2011 12:00 PM EDT IKE An illustration of the winds around Hurricane Ike in 2008. The new Integrated Kinetic Energy scale would have indicated that the storm's surge was much worse than the Category 2 winds at landfall suggested. Mark Powell, a scientist at a federal research lab in Florida, hopes that someday people won't be so easily fooled by hurricanes. Powell, a Ph.D. atmospheric scientist, knows there are problems with the way forecasters tell the public about hurricane strength. Hurricanes cause damage and kill people with both wind and water. And of the two, water is often deadlier. But the familiar hurricane scale - Category 1 to Category 5, named the Saffir-Simpson scale for its inventors - is based on just wind speed, Powell points out. Wind speed alone, especially for Category 1 and 2 hurricanes, can make people think storms are less dangerous than they sometimes are. That kind of misunderstanding has had tragic consequences. This summer, Powell and a colleague, Timothy Reinhold, Ph.D, were granted a U.S. patent for a hurricane strength scale known as IKE. It's designed to rate how powerful a hurricane is, and provide clear ratings of potential damage from both wind and storm surge. "We hope these new scales would do a better job of showing the risk of a hurricane before it makes landfall," Powell said last week. Powell works at the Atlantic and Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Reinhold is senior vice president of research and chief engineer with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, an independent nonprofit organization that works to reduce damage from natural disasters with improved structural standards and preparation. Powell and Reinhold's system calculates the total energy in a storm, the "Integrated Kinetic Energy" or IKE. The IKE value shows a storm's total power, something like its horsepower, based on both wind speed and how much area the winds cover. The IKE value leads to ratings for potential damage from wind and surge. The Wind Damage Potential and Surge Damage Potential ratings run from 0 (lowest) to 5.99. It's a coincidence that Ike is the name of a recent hurricane that is a good example of how the IKE scale shows the true power of both wind and surge. Hurricane Ike made landfall in 2008 on the Texas coast as a Category 2 hurricane. But because of its size and the shallow water offshore, storm surge devastated low-lying areas. Communities on the Bolivar Peninsula were wiped away. In the United States, 112 people died; 23 were never found, according to a National Hurricane Center report. Ike's surge was about twice as high as usually expected from Category 2 winds, Powell and Reinhold say. The hurricane was incredibly large, with reports of tropical-storm winds spanning 510 miles. Powell recalled that the National Weather Service warned Gulf Coast residents that Hurricane Ike would be extremely dangerous. An official warning said people who didn't evacuate would "face certain death." 'Major' concern "In one way you're saying it's significant and you face certain death," Powell said, "and yet it's not a major hurricane according to the [Saffir-Simpson] scale." Hurricanes are called "major hurricanes" by the National Hurricane Center when they are Category 3 and higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale. One of the dangers, Powell said, is people thinking, "'Why should I do anything if it's not a major hurricane?' The public are really familiar with the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They may not be too interested in looking at the details of the forecast." Hurricane Ike caused a huge storm surge "because of the storm's incredible integrated kinetic energy," Reinhold said in a statement. "Storm surge damage was terrible, and confirmed that we were on the right path with the new IKE rating system." The IKE patent was issued June 28, based on a paper Powell and Reinhold authored in 2007. The scientists sought a patent because prediction tools like IKE can be used by businesses and investors. "Our hope was that if there's some commercial use, the royalties could support additional research," Powell said. The patent is assigned to the U.S. Commerce Department. While the IKE scale is gaining acceptance in the scientific community, it has not made the leap to an official product of forecasting agencies like the National Hurricane Center. Powell is hopeful but doesn't know when or if it will happen. "I wish I could be optimistic," Powell said. "All I can say is things move very slowly some times." Though it's not an official forecast product, you can see analysis of storms with IKE scale information on the AOML website: www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd /data_sub/wind.html. The page has background information on related research, and you can view IKE-based storm information from this year by choosing 2011 from the drop-down menu box and then clicking Go. |