In the Northwest Pacific, already a hotspot for tropical cyclones, the storms that strike East and Southeast Asia have been intensifying more than those that stay out at sea over the last four decades, a new study finds. “People should be aware of the increase in typhoon intensity because when they make a landfall these can cause much more damage”, The Guardian quotes Wei.
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In East Asia, typhoons can have destructing impacts.
Overall, landfalling Asian typhoon intensity has increased by about 12 percent in almost four decades.
According to the researchers, most of the typhoons that they examined grew in intensity as a result of increased water temperatures along the coast. They found out that from less than 5 a year, storms that fall under Category 4 and 5 of the Saffir-Siimpson Scale have increased to an average of 7 annually.
At the same time, it is equally important to prepare for future typhoons. The number of category 4 and category 5 storms in some areas of the ocean doubled and even tripled throughout the same period, with the storms that made landfall being marked as the ones that intensified the most.
Scientists have struggled to identify changes in the intensity and frequency of typhoons over the north-western Pacific Ocean – never mind trying to pinpoint a role for global warming.
And the data showed this intensification, in turn, was linked to ocean surface warming – possibly caused by climate change, though this is yet to be proven.
Nine people died in Taiwan and China when typhoon Nepartak battered the region in July. The higher water temperatures could be due to climate patterns that vary naturally, climate change-driven warming, or some combination of the two. The increase in intensity was said to be bigger in China, Taiwan and northern regions.
“With such a short record it is impossible to distinguish between natural decadal variability and [any] anthropogenic signal”, Suzana Camargo, a hurricane-climate researcher at Columbia University said in a report by Climate Cental.
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Another study, also released on Monday, suggested that global warming was making the oceans sicker than ever, spreading disease among animals and humans and threatening global food security.
