Super Typhoon Yagi Nears Southern China After Killing At Least 17 in the Philippines

Super Typhoon Yagi is currently the equivalent of a Category 4 Atlantic hurricane, with sustained wind speeds of 210 km/h (130 mph).

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Hong Kong and China’s southern provinces and cities on Thursday braced for the arrival of Super Typhoon Yagi, which is expected to bring strong winds and torrential rainfall to the region today and tomorrow.

Yagi intensified into a Super Typhoon on Wednesday night local time and is currently the equivalent of a Category 4 Atlantic hurricane, with sustained wind speeds of 210 km/h (130 mph). It is expected to make a rare landfall as a super typhoon in Hainan in the evening of Friday. Between 1949 and 2023, of the 106 typhoons which made landfall in Hainan, only 9 were classified as super typhoons.

Typhoon Yagi formed as a tropical storm on Sunday in the western Philippine Sea. It crossed the islands, dumping 25cm (10 inches) of rain on the northern city of Luzon before moving westward toward the South China Sea.

Yagi’s torrential rainfall led to floods and landslides in the northern part of the archipelago, killing at least 13 people.

Typhoon Classification

Hong Kong, China, Japan and the Philippines classify tropical cyclones into six categories, albeit with small variations. Hong Kong, for example, refers to them simply as “Typhoons” when wind speed does not exceed 149 km/h (92.6 mph), after which they become “Severe Typhoons” (TS). Only when the speed is 185 km/h or above (>115 mph), they take the name of “Super Typhoons” (SuperT).

Hong Kong also relies on a set of numeric warming signals to indicate the threat or effects of a typhoon, with the lowest level (T1 or “standby signal”) issued when a tropical cyclone approaches within 800 kilometres (497 miles) of the territory and poses a threat of deteriorating conditions. According to the strong winds range, the warning can increase to a T3 (Strong Wind), T8 (Gale or Storm), T9 (Increasing Gale or Storm) and T10 (Hurricane).

In its latest bulletin, the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) said the “mature storm” will skirt around 300 kilometres to the southwest of the territory tonight and tomorrow morning and that it “will consider” issuing the Gale or Storm Signal, No. 8 between 4pm and 7pm local time on Thursday.

Climate Crisis

Typhoons – also known as hurricanes in the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific – are a rather common weather phenomenon, though there has been a significant increase in their intensity in recent decades, which scientific observations link to anthropogenic climate change. 

These abnormal trends are attributed largely to the increased ocean temperatures. As ocean surfaces warm, so does the air above it, causing water to be carried up to high altitudes to form clouds, while leaving a low pressure zone beneath causing more air to rush in. As these systems build up, thunderstorms are formed. In the absence of strong winds to disrupt it, the system can intensify into a typhoon.

While the number of typhoons is not necessarily increasing, those that do form are becoming more destructive – generating heavier rain and a higher storm surge.

More on the topic: What Are Tropical Cyclones? Hurricanes and Typhoons, And Their Link to Climate Change, Explained

The world’s seas have been exceptionally warm for more than a year. The average sea surface temperature last month reached 20.88C, the second-highest value on record and only 0.01C shy of the value recorded in July 2023. This put an end to a 15-month period of record-breaking sea surface temperatures. The latest temperature trends makes it “increasingly likely” that 2024 will be the warmest year yet, beating last year, according to the EU weather agency Copernicus.

“Fossil fuel-driven warming is ushering in a new era of bigger, deadlier typhoons,” said Ben Clarke, Researcher at the London Imperial College’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. Clarke was part of a team of researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) that last month published a study on Typhoon Gaemi, which battered the Philippines, Taiwan and eastern China in July. They found that the typhoon, which left more than 100 people dead, was intensified by fossil fuel-driven global warming.

Gaemi saw sustained winds peak at 233 km/h (145 mph), the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. According to the attribution analysis, the winds were about 9 mph (14 km/h) or 7% more intense due to human-made climate change.

Featured image: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.