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How Intense Will Future Tropical Cyclone Impacts Become Due to Global Warming?
According to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), tropical cyclones (TC) are projected to become stronger worldwide as the oceans get warmer in the future. Storm intensification, however, depends on a variety of atmospheric factors, and the regional response needs further studies.
Professor Francis Tam’s group, in collaboration with the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO), used computer models to quantify how global warming changes TCs and induced storm surges affecting the Pearl River Delta area. Their study indicates that the life-time peak intensity of storms will increase on average by about 10% near the end of this century and according to the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5. The increment in induced surge heights over the Hong Kong waters will be similar compared to their present-day values.
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Quantifying local impact of TCs – such as extreme wind, rainfall and storm tides – can be challenging due to the influence of geographical features. Professor Tam’s studies show that the scaling relationship between storm surges in Hong Kong waters and TC windspeed differs from that based on simple theories, which may be due to the complex coastlines of Hong Kong. Insights from these results can be important to projecting future PRD storm risks.
Research findings were published in Nature Scientific Reports:
Chen, J., Wang, Z., Tam, C. Y., Lau, N. C., Lau, D. S. D., & Mok, H. Y. (2020). Impacts of climate change on tropical cyclones and induced storm surges in the Pearl River Delta region using pseudo-global-warming method. Scientific Reports , 10(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58824-8
Acknowledgement:
This section of research project was supported by grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s Discretionary Fund of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (project no.: 4930744), General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong (ref. no. 14306115), and Shenzhen Research Institute of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (grant no. A.02.20.00401).
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