Examining the ENSO-typhoon hypothesis

Abstract

Modern typhoon data and historical documents from Guangdong Province, southern China, are analyzed and found to support the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-typhoon hypothesis. The hypothesis states that tropical cyclone formation during an El Niño event shifts eastward, with typhoons tending to recurve north, staying away from China. From the comprehensive but short modern record, typhoon tracks are grouped into 3 distinct clusters based on geographic position at maximum and terminal typhoon intensities. The majority of typhoons originate between 110 and 170°E longitude in the latitude belt between 8 and 25°N. In general, typhoons take 1 of 3 paths away from this genesis region -a westerly path between latitudes (straight moving), a west-northwesterly path (recurving), or a north-oriented path that keeps them out to sea. Straight-moving typhoons are a significant threat to the Philippines, southern China, and Vietnam, whereas recurving typhoons occasionally threaten Japan, Korea, and northern China. The number of straight-moving typhoons, when grouped by year, is found to be significantly positively correlated with the number of landfalls over China south of the Tropic of Cancer. Thus, the abundance of straight-moving typhoons is a good indicator of the typhoon threat to portions of southern China. Moreover, the number of straightmoving typhoons is correlated with the ENSO cycle. A long annual time-series (1600-1909) of typhoon landfall counts from Guangdong, extracted from historical documents together with treering proxy records of the ENSO cycle, provide data that independently support this relationship. KEY WORDS: Typhoons · Typhoon tracks · ENSO · Guangdong · Southern China · Cluster analysisResale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisher

Reconstructing typhoons in Japan in the 1880s from documentary records

“…Linking the Japan historical chronologies to chronologies developed for China (Chan and Shi, 2000;Liu et al, 2001;Elsner and Liu, 2003;Fogarty et al, 2006), the Philippines (Ribera et al, 2005;García-Herrera et al, 2007;Ribera et al, 2008) and possibly Korea and Taiwan will make it possible to investigate longer-term patterns of typhoon formation and behaviour throughout the WNP. Combining data from many countries in the region will also make it possible to map historical typhoon tracks for the entire WNP to better understand the variability of typhoon behaviours over longer time periods under climatic conditions differing from those of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.…”

“…Regionally, Liu et al (2001) found that 1850-1880 was a period of frequent typhoon strikes on Guangdong in southern China while the 1880s had a frequency near the lower end of decadal means in the record (1600-1900). Based on the inverse relationship between typhoons taking a straight track towards southern China and those recurving towards Japan (Elsner and Liu, 2003), this indicates that the 1880s would have been a decade with more frequent typhoons affecting Japan. A reconstruction of northwest Pacific typhoons from Philippine Jesuit records (García-Herrera et al, 2007) suggests that an increased number of typhoons making landfall in the Philippines in the 1880s marked the end of a period of lower annual frequencies of typhoons during the second half of the nineteenth century.…”

“…The western North Pacific (WNP) is the most active tropical cyclone region in the world with about one-third of the world's tropical cyclones originating there (Elsner and Liu, 2003). During the 57-year period , an average of 26.6 tropical cyclones (reaching at least tropical storm intensity) per year formed in the region with a maximum of 39 in 1967 and a minimum of 16 in 1998(Japan Meteorological Agency, 2009).…”

“…Chan and Shi (2000) used historical records from China to document typhoon landfalls for the period from 1491 to 1931 and Liu et al (2001) used similar Chinese records to extend the record of typhoon strikes in China back to 1000 AD. Elsner and Liu (2003) Ribera et al (2008) used the same dataset to chronicle the history of the deadliest typhoons that affected the Philippines. For Japan, Grossman and Zaiki (2007) used data from historical documents to reconstruct typhoon frequencies from 1801 to 1830 and to estimate the tracks of well-documented historical typhoons in the nineteenth century Zaiki, 2008, 2009).…”

Report on the 2014 Winter Cyclone Storm Surge in Nemuro, Japan

“…[Fujii et al, 2002;Kohno et al, 2010]). Because typhoons which reach Japan commonly take recurving paths toward northeast and are attenuated by the move into the belt of westerlies, Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, is usually away from the paths of strong typhoons ( [Elsner and Liu, 2003]). As a consequence, Hokkaido had never experienced any recorded storm surge disaster, and hardly any measure to reduce tidal flood impacts had been taken there.…”