Typhoons of western North Pacific basin under warming climate and implications for future wind hazard of East Asia

Abstract

How global warming will affect the typhoon activities and therefore impact future wind hazard is of importance to human being’s preparedness for climate change. Herein a statistical dynamics synthetic tropical cyclone (TC) model, combining with the environmental parameters produced by five global climate models, is proposed for exploring quantitatively the typhoon wind hazard in the period 2071–2100 under the scenario of the least constrained emission. Compared with the current climate of the period 1981–2010, the future annual TC occurrence number will decrease for most climate models, but the amplitude varies from different models. The shift of TC tracks to the northeast may mitigate typhoon risk in the southeast coast of China while increase typhoon hazards in northern East Asia. Additionally, the proportion of super typhoon increases, which turns to enhance the extreme wind speeds in most coastal areas of East Asia. In general, the future environmental conditions of warming climate will contribute to forming more extreme typhoons in the western North Pacific basin and the typhoon wind hazard tends to increase in East Asia.