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Typhoon Gaemi before making landfall in Taiwan on July 24. Image from the NOAA-20 Satellite.
Typhoon Gaemi (known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Carina) strengthened into a tropical storm on July 20th while tracking northwest towards the Philippines.
Typhoon Gaemi (known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Carina) strengthened into a tropical storm on July 20th while tracking northwest towards the Philippines. Gaemi did not make landfall in the Philippines but interacted with the ongoing southwest monsoon (known locally as Habagat), causing heavy winds and torrential rainfall from July 22-24 in the northern Philippines. In total, 48 people were killed, with around 6.5 million affected by the severe conditions. 45 landslides were triggered across the northern islands, there were power outages in over 100 cities and municipalities, and around 400 sections of road and 30 bridges were damaged.
The storm intensified as it continued northwards towards the island of Taiwan, becoming a category 4-equivalent Typhoon on the 24th, with maximum (10-minute) sustained winds of 185 km/h. It made a prolonged landfall in northeast Taiwan on the 24th, bringing both heavy rain and high winds that killed 10 people and injured more than 900, while the agricultural sector reported damages of roughly US$50 million (FocusTaiwan, 2024a, FocusTaiwan, 2024b). It subsequently made landfall as a weaker, but still destructive tropical storm on mainland China on July 25. Gaemi brought heavy rainfall to coastal and inland regions, particularly the Hunan province, as it weakened to a tropical depression. Cyclone-based rainfall is uncommon so far inland in China and the heavy precipitation led to flooding and a mudslide that killed 15 people, and another 15 people in neighbouring provinces.35 remained missing a week after the disaster, and 290,000 people were evacuated (CNN, 2024).
The influence of climate change on tropical cyclones is complex compared to other types of extreme weather events. However, attribution studies are increasingly focusing on these destructive events. Rapid attribution studies to date have focused primarily on severe rainfall from such storms. Here, we use several different approaches to investigate the influence of climate change on multiple aspects of Typhoon Gaemi. The study focuses on the three geographic regions that experienced severe impacts – northern Philippines, the island of Taiwan and Hunan province, and analyse whether and to what extent human-induced climate change affected wind speeds and rainfall. To study the conditions that formed and fuelled Gaemi, we also analyse the role of climate change in high sea surface temperatures and potential intensity, a metric combining sea surface temperature, air temperature and air humidity data to predict maximum typhoon wind speeds. The study combines the established World Weather Attribution protocol with a new approach using the Imperial College Storm Model (IRIS) to analyse the role of human-induced climate change in tropical cyclones.
Figure 1: Daily rainfall totals from July 22nd-28th over the regions affected by Typhoon Gaemi. The three regions (Hunan, Taiwan and the Northern Philippines) in the study are highlighted in red: bright on the heaviest days, » …