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A new study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) has linked the devastating Typhoon Gaemi, which swept through the Philippines, Taiwan and China in July 2024, to global climate change. The typhoon was characterised by high wind speeds and extreme rainfall and caused widespread damage and loss of life.
WWA is an academic collaboration that studies the attribution of extreme events.
The study, published August 29, 2024, was carried out by 14 WWA scientists from the University of the Philippines, Princeton University, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in the Netherlands and Imperial College London in the United Kingdom.
The typhoon, which struck July 22-25, 2024, claimed over 100 lives. In the Philippines, it strengthened into a tropical storm on July 20 while moving northwest towards the country. Despite not making landfall there, it resulted in 45 fatalities and impacted at least 6.5 million people.
As the storm approached Taiwan, it intensified, eventually reaching Category 4 status, equivalent to a typhoon. On July 24, it made a prolonged landfall in northeastern Taiwan before impacting mainland China on July 25 as a slightly weakened, yet still potent, tropical storm.
The study highlights that the burning of fossil fuels has already caused the climate to warm by 1.2 degrees Celsius, contributing to the extreme rainfall brought by Typhoon Gaemi.
Such extreme rainfall events now occur in northern Philippines approximately once every 20 years. In Taiwan, these events now happen every 5 years, compared to every 8 years previously. In Hunan, China, such rainfall now occurs roughly once every 100 years, compared to once every 160 years previously.
The WWA study further found that climate change has caused rainfall in Hunan and Taiwan to increase by 9 per cent and 14per cent respectively, while overall, the likelihood of such heavy rainfall in both regions has risen by 60 per cent. If the world continues to rely on fossil fuels, leading to a 2°C rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels, devastating typhoon rainfall events in these regions could become 30-50 per cent more frequent.
The frequency of these storms has already increased by nearly 30 per cent due to climate change, with such events now occurring 6-7 times per year, up from 5 times previously. Additionally, the maximum wind speeds of similar storms have increased by almost 7 per cent, reaching 3.9 metres per second, according to the study.
Climate change is creating more favourable conditions for typhoons, resulting in increasingly intense storms with higher rainfall totals and stronger wind speeds, WWA stated.
These findings align with other scientific studies indicating that tropical cyclones are becoming stronger and wetter due to climate change.
“Already a new powerful typhoon is crossing Japan, threatening Japanese lives and again drawing in the monsoon. It’s only a matter of time before the next one,” climate campaigner Jefferson Chua for green campaigning network Greenpeace said in a statement.
As another typhoon, Shanshan, made landfall in Japan on August 28, 2024, affecting millions, the climate scientists behind the study pointed to rising sea-surface temperatures as a key factor behind the increasing intensity of tropical storms in Asia.
Without climate change, sea-surface temperatures as high as those recorded in July 2024 would have been nearly impossible. These temperatures have already risen by approximately 1°C and are projected to increase by another 0.6°C if global warming reaches 2°C, which could increase the likelihood of storms like Typhoon Gaemi by nearly tenfold, according to the scientists.
