What are millibars and why are they used to measure hurricanes?

Question

And why is a rapid DROP in them bad?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

* Bar is a unit of pressure, like psi, pascals, etc. 1 bar = 1000 mbar (so 1 mbar = 0.001 bar. It’s like meters and mm)
* The storm and its wind intensity are driven by a difference in air pressure between inside and outside. The bigger the difference in pressure, the stronger the wind as air is sucked/pushed from high to low P regions.
* The outside surrounding air pressure is what it is, so for a storm in a given region, the greater the DROP in air pressure inside the storm = the bigger the difference in pressure between outside and inside = the stronger the winds.