Sea surface temperature warming to inhibit mitigation of tropical cyclone destructiveness over East Asia in El Niño

Given their conditions to reside in and intensify longer over warm oceans, tropical cyclones (TCs) in the western North Pacific (WNP) present a stronger lifetime maximum intensity during El Niño than during La Niña. By using observational data, we found that the anomalously cool sea surface temperat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NPJ climate and atmospheric science 2024-01, Vol.7 (1), p.24-7, Article 24
Main Authors: Park, Doo-Sun R., Seo, Eunkyo, Lee, Minkyu, Cha, Dong-Hyun, Kim, Dasol, Ho, Chang-Hoi, Lee, Myong-In, Kim, Hyeong-Seog, Min, Seung-Ki
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
21st century
704/106
704/106/35
Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution
Atmospheric Sciences
Climate change
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Climatology
Cyclones
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
El Nino
Emission
Emissions
Global warming
Heat
La Nina
Oceans
Science education
Sea surface temperature
Tropical cyclones
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Summary:Given their conditions to reside in and intensify longer over warm oceans, tropical cyclones (TCs) in the western North Pacific (WNP) present a stronger lifetime maximum intensity during El Niño than during La Niña. By using observational data, we found that the anomalously cool sea surface temperature (SST)s in the basin act as effective barriers against intense TCs approaching East Asia during El Niño, weakening their destructiveness at landfall. Based on our high-resolution pseudo-global-warming simulations, the basin-wide 2K SST warming within the WNP basin can, however, shatter this cool SST barrier, exposing East Asia to more destructive TCs during El Niño, compared to those during La Niña. Considering that the 2K warmer WNP will likely occur in the mid-21st century under a high emission scenario and in the late 21st century under a moderate emission scenario, our findings support that more aggressive efforts of global warming mitigation are needed.
ISSN:2397-3722
2397-3722
DOI:10.1038/s41612-023-00556-3