Tropical storms may threaten higher latitudes by the end of the century, thanks to climate change
Tropical storms may threaten higher latitudes by the end of the century, thanks to climate change lead image
Rising global temperatures induced by climate change heighten the severity of many natural disasters, including tropical storms. Warmer oceans impart more energy into these extreme weather systems, leading to higher winds and more flooding.
Wu et al. employed multiple computational approaches to examine how tropical cyclones (TCs) in the western Pacific are likely to evolve over the course of the century due to climate change.
“A potentially increased TC hazard due to climate change can have serious consequences on life, financial wellbeing, and social harmony,” said author Xiaoye Yu. “However, current studies on quantifying this likely future wind hazard variation fall short of the needed attention.”
The authors identified three parallel approaches to predict the evolving TC hazard in future years. Two of these approaches rely on direct inputs from future global circulation models (GCMs), while the third approach employs modified datasets by incorporating the relative difference between the historical and future GCMs. All three predict increasing TC risk and intensity at higher latitudes as a direct consequence of a warming planet, with wind speeds more than 20% greater in the northernmost cities under the worst-case scenario.
“Because of this, some northern coastal areas that historically lacked TC threat may confront increased TC risk in the future,” said Yu.
The researchers envisage their work will guide policy and urban design in northern coastal regions to better prepare communities for more severe storms. In the future, they plan to incorporate more data to further refine their models and evaluate the impacts of these destructive events on infrastructure.
Source: “Projection of climate change impact on tropical cyclone hazard in Western North Pacific basin,” by Dengguo Wu, Xiaoye Yu, Yu Chen, Kin Sik Liu, Zhongdong Duan, and Ahsan Kareem, Physics of Fluids (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0260880 .
