Four typhoons at a time: Does climate change bring more devastating storms?

Editor's note: Wei Ke is a professor at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of CGTN.

Four typhoons spinning simultaneously across the Northwestern Pacific and the South China Sea on Monday marked an unusually active moment in this year's typhoon season. Typhoon Narra (19th named typhoon of this year) wreaked havoc across the Beibu Gulf; Typhoon Gaenari (20th) landed in east China's Fujian Province; Typhoon Saudel (18th), having traveled more than 3,000 kilometers across the Western Pacific, was gradually approaching the 48‑hour warning line. Meanwhile, Typhoon Atsani (21st) was newly named, continuing to intensify and could threaten China. Typhoon activity over the Northwestern Pacific has thus reached a seasonal peak.

Climatologically, an average of 13 to 14 numbered typhoons form over the Northwestern Pacific and the South China Sea between January and August. This year has already seen 21 numbered typhoons, well above the long‑term mean. This hyperactive typhoon season has drawn widespread public attention: Is global warming making typhoons more frequent?

This seemingly straightforward question involves complex ocean-atmosphere interaction and cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.

Frequency versus intensity

Theoretically, typhoons originate over warm tropical oceans. A global rise in sea‑surface temperature expands warm ocean areas and thickens upper‑ocean heat reservoirs, providing ample thermal energy for typhoon embryos to develop and intensify.

Even so, warm water is only one condition. Typhoon formation depends on a mix of meteorological conditions: favorable wind‑humidity environments and suitable initial disturbances that serve as typhoon "seeds" over appropriate ocean areas. These competing factors mean no simple link exists between global warming and total typhoon counts, leading to inconsistent research outcomes.

Adding to this complexity is typhoons' observed self‑suppression effect. Powerful typhoon winds trigger violent vertical mixing of seawater, lifting cold deep-sea water to the surface and lowering sea surface temperatures, which effectively inhibits the genesis and intensification of subsequent typhoons.

Nevertheless, over the past three decades, scientific research has solidified an important consensus on tropical cyclone changes under global warming: the frequency and peak intensity of severe typhoons are increasing globally, backed by observations and numerical simulations. This means that violent winds, extreme rainfall and storm surges are posing growing risks to coastal and offshore communities.

Climate-driven shifts

Beyond intensity shifts, global warming is reshaping the spatial behavior of typhoons. Warming expands tropical warm-water domains poleward, driving typhoon activity farther north. A typical case is Typhoon Doksuri in 2023. After landfall, its residual circulation traveled northward, unleashing record-breaking torrential rain and severe flooding across north China's Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin and parts of northeast China.

Growing disaster destructiveness further illustrates climate‑driven shifts. The current naming system for typhoons was launched in 2000, with 14 Asia‑Pacific countries and regions vulnerable to typhoons each contributing ten names, forming a list of 140 names used in rotation. Names are permanently retired after catastrophic damage. Historically, zero to three names are retired per year, with a long‑term average of approximately 3.3. Since 2020, however, retirements have risen sharply: nine names were retired in both 2022 and 2024, and eight in 2025. These statistics indicate a marked rise in occurrences of highly destructive extreme typhoons.

Remote impacts

Of particular concern is the growing remote impact effect of typhoons under climate change.

Without making direct landfall, typhoons can trigger extreme torrential rainfall in inland and northern China, which has become a key cause of frequent extreme rain disasters in non-coastal areas in recent years.

In the 2026 typhoon season, Typhoon Bavi and Typhoon Dolphin delivered abundant water vapor to northeast China through long-distance peripheral circulation transport. The sustained moisture supply coupled with local atmospheric instability, triggering severe torrential rain and urban waterlogging in multiple cities, fully reflecting the prominent remote disaster-causing characteristics of modern typhoons.

El Nino's role

Besides the long‑term background of global warming, interannual air‑sea anomalies strongly modulate typhoon behavior, most notably El Nino events.

During El Nino, abnormally high sea‑surface temperatures across the equatorial central‑eastern Pacific shift the primary typhoon‑genesis zone of the Northwestern Pacific eastward. Typhoons forming farther east travel longer distances over the ocean, accumulating moisture and energy over extended durations and therefore tending to grow stronger and more destructive. Typhoon Dolphin in early August this year illustrates this pattern: it traveled more than 6,000 kilometers over the ocean with a lifespan of two weeks, bringing persistent wind and rain to broad areas of eastern China.

In short, global warming does not simply mean that the world will experience more typhoons. Instead, it is profoundly transforming typhoon behavior across the Northwestern Pacific: severe typhoons are becoming more frequent and intense; typhoon activity expands northward; and highly destructive extreme cyclones occur more often. When modulated by interannual air‑sea anomalies such as El Nino, typhoon‑driven hazards exhibit greater extremity and compound‑disaster characteristics.

Faced with this new reality, we must strengthen climate monitoring, improve typhoon prediction capabilities and upgrade disaster‑prevention and mitigation systems. Only in this way can society effectively counter extreme typhoon risks and build safer defenses for both coastal and inland communities.

(Cover: Clouds loom over the cityscape as Typhoon Gaenari makes landfall, Quanzhou City, east China's Fujian Province, August 24, 2026. /VCG)