Abstract
Typhoons (tropical cyclones) severely impact the half-billion population of the Asian Pacific. Intriguingly, during the recent decade, typhoon destructive potential (Power Dissipation Index, PDI) has decreased considerably (by ∼35%). This decrease, paradoxically, has occurred despite the increase in typhoon intensity and ocean warming. Using the method proposed by Emanuel (in 2007), we show that the stronger negative contributions from typhoon frequency and duration, decrease to cancel the positive contribution from the increasing intensity, controlling the PDI. Examining the typhoons' environmental conditions, we find that although the ocean condition became more favourable (warming) in the recent decade, the atmospheric condition ‘worsened' at the same time. The ‘worsened' atmospheric condition appears to effectively overpower the ‘better' ocean conditions to suppress PDI. This stronger negative contribution from reduced typhoon frequency over the increased intensity is also present under the global warming scenario, based on analysis of the simulated typhoon data from high-resolution modelling.
Highlights
Typhoons severely impact the half-billion population of the Asian Pacific
Using the projected typhoon data from high-resolution modelling from Zhao and Held[10,11], we found that typhoon intensity may increase under the global warming scenario, typhoon frequency could decrease even more notably
Climate projections have reported that the tropical cyclone intensity may increase under global warming, the occurrence frequency is projected to reduce[9,10,11,37,44,46,47,48]
Summary
Typhoons (tropical cyclones) severely impact the half-billion population of the Asian Pacific. During the recent decade, typhoon destructive potential (Power Dissipation Index, PDI) has decreased considerably (by B35%). This decrease, paradoxically, has occurred despite the increase in typhoon intensity and ocean warming. The ‘worsened’ atmospheric condition appears to effectively overpower the ‘better’ ocean conditions to suppress PDI This stronger negative contribution from reduced typhoon frequency over the increased intensity is present under the global warming scenario, based on analysis of the simulated typhoon data from high-resolution modelling. An evident decrease in tropical cyclone destructive potential (that is, PDI) has been observed in the most active and hazardous tropical cyclone basin on the Earth, the Western North Pacific Main Development Region (MDR, Supplementary Fig. 1)[5,6,7]. Based on the above projection, the western North Pacific typhoon PDI under global warming was estimated to be B85% of the current value, equivalent to a 15% reduction in destructive potential
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