Typhoon Gaemi hits Chinese coast and widespread flooding is feared
Singapore:
Climate change is causing changes in precipitation patterns around the world, scientists said in a paper published Friday, which could also be intensifying typhoons and other tropical storms.
Taiwan, the Philippines and then China were hit by the year’s most powerful typhoon this week, with schools, businesses and financial markets closed as wind speeds rose to 227 km/h (141 mph). On China’s east coast, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated ahead of landfall on Thursday.
Stronger tropical storms are part of a broader phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.
Researchers led by Zhang Wenxia of the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied historical meteorological data and found that about 75% of the world’s land area has experienced an increase in “precipitation variability,” or broader swings between wet and dry weather. .
Rising temperatures have increased the atmosphere’s ability to retain moisture, which is causing wider fluctuations in rainfall, researchers said in a paper published in the journal Science.
“(Variability) has increased in most places, including Australia, which means wetter wet spells and drier dry spells,” said Steven Sherwood, a scientist at the University of New South Wales’ Climate Change Research Centre. , who was not involved in the study. to study.
“This will increase as global warming continues, increasing the chances of droughts and/or floods.”
FEWER, BUT MORE INTENSE, STORMS
Scientists believe climate change is also reshaping the behavior of tropical storms, including typhoons, making them less frequent but more powerful.
“I believe that the increase in water vapor in the atmosphere is the ultimate cause of all these trends towards more extreme hydrological phenomena,” Sherwood told Reuters.
Typhoon Gaemi, which hit Taiwan for the first time on Wednesday, was the strongest to hit the island in eight years.
While it’s difficult to attribute individual weather events to climate change, models predict that global warming makes typhoons stronger, said Sachie Kanada, a researcher at Japan’s Nagoya University.
“In general, warmer sea surface temperatures are a favorable condition for tropical cyclone development,” she said.
In its “blue book” on climate change published this month, China said the number of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea has decreased significantly since the 1990s, but that they are getting stronger.
Taiwan also said in its climate change report published in May that climate change would likely reduce the total number of typhoons in the region, while also making each one more intense.
The decline in the number of typhoons is due to the uneven pattern of ocean warming, with temperatures rising more quickly in the western Pacific than in the east, said Feng Xiangbo, a tropical cyclone research scientist at the University of Reading.
Water vapor capacity in the lower atmosphere is expected to increase by 7% for every 1-degree Celsius increase in temperatures, with tropical cyclone rainfall in the United States increasing by up to 40% for every one-degree increase, he said.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
This story originally appeared on Ndtv.com read the full story
