Typhoon and storm surge intensity changes in a warming climate around the Korean Peninsula

• Published in: Natural hazards (Dordrecht) Vol. 66; no. 3; pp. 1405 - 1429
• Main Authors: Oh, Sang Myeong, Moon, Il-Ju
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.04.2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Air temperature; Atmospherics; Civil Engineering; Climate; Climate change; Climate models; Coasts; Computer simulation; Cyclones; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Earth, ocean, space; East China Sea; Engineering and environment geology. Geothermics; Environmental Management; Exact sciences and technology; Forecasting; Geophysics/Geodesy; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Global warming; Hurricanes; Hydrogeology; Koreans; Marine; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; Natural Hazards; Natural hazards: prediction, damages, etc; Ocean; Original Paper; Peninsulas; Relative humidity; Sea surface temperature; Simulation; Storm surges; Storms; Temperature; Tidal waves; Typhoons; Weather; Pacific Ocean; West Pacific; Far East; Asia; East China Sea; Korea; North Sea; Korean Peninsula; Typhoon; Climate change; Storm surge; Korean Peninsula; experimental studies; models; projects; simulation; latitude; pressure; global warming; surface temperature; winds; prediction; humidity; sea level; storms; climate change
• ISSN: 0921-030X; 1573-0840
• DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0422-z

This study investigates the intensity change in typhoons and storm surges surrounding the Korean Peninsula under global warming conditions as obtained from the MPI_ECHAM5 climate model using the A1B series. The authors use the Cyclostationary Empirical Orthogonal Function to estimate future background fields for typhoon simulations from twenty-first-century prediction results. A series of numerical experiments applies WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) and POM (Prinston Ocean Model) models to simulate two historical typhoons, Maemi (2003) and Rusa (2002), and associated storm surges under real historical and future warming conditions. Applying numerical experiments to two typhoons, this study found that their central pressure dropped about 19 and 17 hPa, respectively, when considering the future sea surface temperature (a warming of 3.9 °C for 100 years) over the East China Sea (Exp. 1). The associated enhancement of storm surge height ranged from 16 to 67 cm along the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. However, when the study considered global warming conditions for other atmospheric variables such as sea-level pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, geopotential height, and wind in the typhoon simulations (Exp. 2), the intensities of the two typhoons and their associated surge heights scarcely increased compared to the results of Exp. 1. Analyzing projected atmospheric variables, the authors found that air temperatures at the top of the storm around 200 hPa increased more than those at the surface in tropical and mid-latitudes. The reduced vertical temperature difference provided an unfavorable condition in the typhoon’s development even under conditions of global warming. This suggests that global warming may not always correlate with a large increase in the number of intense cyclones and/or an increase in associated storm surges.