Changing impacts of tropical cyclones on East and Southeast Asian inland regions in the past and a globally warmed future climate

This study analyzes the impacts of the western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclone (TC) on East and Southeast Asian inland regions. Tropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most devastating types of natural disasters to coastal regions and can inflict huge economic and societal losses. The past five decades have seen detectable anthropogenic warming of the climate system, and many modeling studies have suggested that the anthropogenic warming could exert remarkable influences on TCs. This study focuses on WNP TCs to investigate historical changes of TC-related inland impacts over both East and Southeast Asia regions in the past four decades (1979–2016) based on multiple -best track datasets and discuss the physical process behind.

The findings indicate that a dramatic increase of WNP TC impacts on East and Southeast Asian inland regions. The TC inland impacts would be even stronger in the CP warming pattern under the global warming condition. The past decades have seen a rapid global urbanization from the coastal regions to more and more inland locations. However, some inland places may not be well prepared for such TC impacts. For these inland regions, it is necessary to build up higher resilience to TC-related disasters in the future.