International
Climate change 'spells worse typhoons for Asia'
Climate change 'spells worse typhoons for Asia'
September 05, 2016 | 06:24 PM
China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas will experience more violent typhoons under climate change, said researchers on Monday, presenting evidence for a recent rise in storm intensity caused by ocean warming.Scientists have struggled to identify changes in the intensity and frequency of typhoons over the northwest Pacific ocean -- never mind trying to pinpoint a role for global warming.Contradictory trends emerge from records such as the Joint Typhoon Warming Center and the Japan Meteorological Agency -- the two most widely-used data sets in typhoon research, according to the US-based study authors Wei Mei and Shang-Ping Xie.They have now corrected the available data for differences in methodology and discovered a single, clear trend."Over the past 37 years, typhoons that strike east and southeast Asia have intensified by 12-15%," they wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.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.Projections for ocean warming if humans continue to emit planet-harming greenhouse gases, said the team, "suggest that typhoons striking eastern mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan will intensify further."Given disproportionate damages by intense typhoons, this represents a heightened threat to people and properties in the region."The human population in these coastal areas was growing fast, they pointed out, and sea levels were rising.The world's nations concluded a pact in Paris last December to halt the march of climate change, which threatens stronger storms, longer droughts and land-gobbling sea-level rise.This would be achieved by curbing the emission of heat-trapping gases from the use of fossil fuels.
September 05, 2016 | 06:24 PM