Climate change putting Philippines at double risk of typhoons

SINGAPORE: Climate change is making the Philippines more vulnerable to tropical storms, with rising temperatures already putting the country at nearly double the risk of deadly typhoons, scientists said in a report published on Thursday.

The unprecedented formation of four typhoons around the Philippines last month was made 70% more likely as a result of global temperature rises of 1.3°C, researchers with the World Weather Attribution group said in a report published on Thursday.

Though scientists are cautious when it comes to attributing individual weather events to climate change, the consensus is that warmer oceans are intensifying rainfall and wind speeds across the globe.

“Climate change made the conditions that formed and fuelled the typhoons nearly twice as likely,” the group said.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated and more than 170 people killed during an unprecedented sequence of six tropical cyclones that landed in the country in October and November, raising concerns that storm activity was being turbocharged by higher sea surface temperatures.

“The storms were more likely to develop more strongly and reach the Philippines at a higher intensity than they otherwise would have,” said Ben Clarke, a weather researcher at Imperial College London, one of the report’s authors.

If temperatures rise to 2.6°C above pre-industrial levels, those same storm conditions would be 40% more likely compared to now, he added.

An analysis published last month by US weather researchers Climate Central said that hurricanes had intensified significantly as a result of record-breaking ocean warming, with wind speeds up by 29 km/h.

Scientists believe warmer ocean temperatures are intensifying tropical storms by increasing the rate of evaporation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its latest assessment that there was “high confidence” that global warming would make storms more intense.

It is still unclear whether or not rising temperatures would extend the normal typhoon season or make tropical storms more frequent, but climate activists are concerned.

“We used to have what we called a hazard calendar – now it is just basically the whole year around,” said Afrhill Rances, the Philippines’ representative with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.