Scientists claimed on Thursday that Typhoon Gaemi, which earlier this year killed scores of people in the Philippines, Taiwan, and China, had winds and rains that were accelerated by climate change.
After passing through the Philippines in July and causing landslides and floods that claimed at least 40 lives, Gaemi made landfall in Taiwan and China.
The weather system in China produced extremely heavy rains that resulted in the deaths of fifty people and forced 300,000 people to be evacuated.
The three areas most severely impacted by the typhoon were the northern Philippines, Taiwan, and the Hunan province of China. These locations were examined by World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of scientists that have developed peer-reviewed techniques for evaluating the effect of climate change in extreme events.
It discovered that as a result of human-caused climate change, the system’s wind speeds had increased by 7% and its rainfall had increased by 9% and 14% in Taiwan and Hunan, respectively.
Because of the complicated monsoon rain patterns in the Philippines, the study was unable to come to any firm findings regarding the impact of climate change on rainfall in the area.
Even still, scientists discovered that, in a world where global warming had not reached the present 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warm waters that contributed to the formation and fueling of Typhoon Gaemi “would have been virtually impossible”.
Furthermore, according to the group’s modeling, the number of storms with comparable intensity has already grown by 30% as a result of global warming, from about five to six or seven each year.
“This study confirms what we’ve expected — hotter seas and atmospheres are giving rise to more powerful, longer-lived and deadlier typhoons,” said Ralf Toumi, director of the Grantham Institute-Climate Change and the Environment, at Imperial College London.
Teasing out the impact of climate change on tropical cyclones is complicated, but scientists are focusing more work on these weather systems.
WWA’s method involves assessing how unusual an extreme event is, then modelling the likelihood of a similar event and its intensity in two scenarios: today’s world, and one without current levels of warming.
The scientists used that method and a new approach developed by Imperial College London that is tailored specifically to tropical storms.
In order to make up for the relative paucity of historical data on tropical cyclones, computer modeling is used.
Although typhoons have traditionally affected the Asia-Pacific area, the scientists cautioned that their research revealed “gaps in typhoon preparedness and the massive impacts caused by Gaemi.”
They want more precise alerts that provide additional details on the expected effects of a storm as well as improved urban flood management.
Typhoon Shanshan made landfall in Japan, prompting the publication of the report and the issuance of the country’s strongest wind and storm surge warning.
