A recent article at the South China Morning Post (SCMP), titled “Climate change may have played role in record number of region’s super typhoons, Hong Kong meteorologist says,” claims that climate change “may” have led to a record year for super typhoons in the northwest Pacific. This headline is misleading framing, with the word “may” carrying a lot of weight. The claims made in the article itself are not more guarded and less alarmist. Although the conditions were good for typhoon formation this year, there is no evidence that tropical cyclones are becoming more common or intense, as trends established from long-term data show.
The northwest Pacific saw 25 named tropical storms in 2024, with 8 super typhoons (equivalent to about a category 4 or 5 hurricane).
According to the SCMP article, a former minister chief of the “Observatory” – the Hong Kong meteorological agency—wrote on social media that “rising sea temperatures favored the formation and intensification of tropical cyclones,” and that this “is also the first time in November that four tropical cyclones have appeared simultaneously in the northwest Pacific.”
While it is true that warm ocean waters are a known contributor to tropical cyclone formation, they are just one element. Other factors like wind shear must also be right for strong storms to form, which interestingly the SCMP article acknowledges in a quote from another scientist from the Observatory, Leung Wing-mo. SCMP explains that “global warming was just [a] factor contributing to the formation of tropical cyclones.”
Leung said that sea surface temperatures were higher in 2023, but there were not as many typhoons, “[t]hat explains sea surface temperature is not the only factor.” SCMP goes on to list wind circulation, and vertical wind shear as influential factors. Neither Leung nor SCMP attempted to link those conditions to climate change.
Addressing rising sea surface temperatures; while evidence suggests that sea surface temperatures may be gradually be increasing, ocean temperatures may only have increased by about 0.7°C since 1880 according to the National Center for Environmental Information and described at Climate at a Glance: Ocean Temperatures. This year’s anomalous temperatures were a whole degree above normal in the northern Pacific Ocean, according to the SCMP article. That’s well outside of the warming average of just fractions of a degree per year, with the spike most likely a lingering effect of the natural El Niño Southern Oscillation, which has been in its warm phase since 2023, though it has recently begun to cool.
With regards to tropical cyclone formation, data compiled by meteorologist Ryan Maue show that globally major hurricane frequency has declined slightly since the 1990s, and even this year has been pretty average despite warm waters. (See figure below)
Although compared to some of the media reports we respond to at Climate Realism the SCMP article was relatively balanced, linking one year’s above-average sea surface temperatures and super cyclone numbers in a single region with climate change is unjustified. A variety of factors influence sea surface temperatures and typhoon formation and strength, none of which are trending upward during the recent period of modest warming.
