A woman sits amid the destruction left behind by Typhoon Nepartak in China. (Photo : Twitter)
China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia should expect more powerful typhoons in the coming years, a new study revealed.
In a study conducted by a team of researchers from the United States, they have discovered that typhoons that hit the East and Southeast Asian regions have progressively become stronger in the last 40 years, the South China Morning Post reported.
The scientists looked at the data gathered by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) run by the US Navy and Air Force and that from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) to calculate the strength and intensity of typhoons that have occurred from 1977 to the present.
They found out that the storms have increased in intensity by around 12 to 14 percent. The team also discovered that the number of category 4 and 5 typhoons have increased from less than five annually in the 1970s to around seven today. Categories 4 and 5 are the strongest typhoon classification, with wind speeds reaching 253 kilometers per hour or more.
Wei Mei, a climatologist from the University of California and the study's lead author, said that the increase in the strength and number of typhoons in the region can be attributed to the warmer seawater flowing near the coasts.
Wei's team noted that there was a corresponding increase in coastal water temperatures in East and Southeast Asia during the period when typhoons got stronger.
On the other hand, in the open ocean, where surface water temperatures haven't increased significantly, the typhoons forming there did not get any markedly stronger.
However, some experts said that there are some issues with the data the team used for the study. They point out that the JTWC and the JMA recorded their data sets different, with the former recording wind speed averages every minute, while the latter does it every ten minutes. According to them, the adjustments made by the team to account for the discrepancies might have introduced some errors.
Nevertheless, they agreed that the results of the study are important in fully understanding the impact of human-induced climate change on the atmosphere, The Verge reported.
According to Kerry Emanual, a meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the team's study is the first time experts have taken a concrete look at the effect of the trend on a regional scale.
The study was published on Monday by the journal Nature Geoscience.
