Abstract
The impacts of the western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclone (TC) on East and Southeast Asian inland regions are analyzed. Here, based on a stringent TC selecting criterion, robust increase of TC-related inland impacts between 1979 and 2016 over East and Southeast Asian regions have been detected. The storms sustained for 2–9 h longer and penetrated 30–190 km further inland, as revealed from different best track datasets. The most significant increase of the TC inland impacts occurred over Hanoi and South China. The physical mechanism that affects TC-related inland impacts is shortly discussed. First, the increasing TC inland impacts just occur in the WNP region, but it is not a global effect. Second, besides the significant WNP warming effects on the enhanced TC landfall intensity and TC inland impacts, it is suggested that the weakening of the upper-level Asian Pacific teleconnection pattern since 1970s may also play an important role, which may reduce the climatic 200 hPa anti-cyclonic wind flows over the Asian region, weakening the wind shear near the Philippine Sea, and may eventually intensify the TC intensity when the TCs across the basin. Moreover, the TC inland impacts in the warming future are projected based on a high-resolution (20 km) global model according to the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario. By the end of the 21st century, TC mean landfall intensity will increase by 2 m/s (6%). The stronger storms will sustain 4.9 h (56%) longer and penetrate 92.4 km (50%) farther inland, thereby almost doubling the destructive power delivered to Asian inland regions. More inland locations will therefore be exposed to severe storm–related hazards in the future due to warmer climate. Long-term planning to enhance disaster preparedness and resilience in these regions is called for.
Highlights
Accompanied by high winds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, tropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most devastating types of natural disasters to coastal regions and can inflict huge economic and societal losses (Lee and Wong, 2007; Needham et al, 2015; Cerveny et al, 2017; Khouakhi et al, 2017)
About 5–6 TCs made landfall in the studied region every year, which is 1–2 more landfalling TCs than that reported by Liu et al (2020), who focused on the China region
Previous studies have shown a remarkable increase of the TC landfall intensity over the China region (Mei and Xie, 2016; Li et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2020), which may be highly related to the rapid coastal ocean warming over the western North Pacific (WNP) (Mei and Xie, 2016; Liu et al, 2020)
Summary
Accompanied by high winds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, tropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most devastating types of natural disasters to coastal regions and can inflict huge economic and societal losses (Lee and Wong, 2007; Needham et al, 2015; Cerveny et al, 2017; Khouakhi et al, 2017). The East Asian countries, which suffered most from TC-related disasters, have been exposed to more intense landfalling storms (Park et al, 2011; Mei and Xie, 2016; Li et al, 2017). TC intensity at landfall over China has been increasing in recent decades (Chan, 2008; Mei and Xie, 2016; Li et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2020), which can be an important factor for the lengthening of TC lifetime, extending the distance travelled after landfall, and amplifying storm destructiveness over land (Liu et al, 2020). The aforementioned studies just focused on the China region; changes of landfalling TCs in the entire western North Pacific (WNP) region and their impacts on East to Southeast Asian coastal regions are still not clear
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