Book Description

Severe tropical storms and typhoons hit East Asia mainly from summer to autumn every year, bringing abundant water resources to the inhabitants. However, typhoons are among the most devastating of all natural disasters, causing the loss of many lives and giving rise to large economic losses. In Japan, the number of fatalities as a result of typhoons has been reduced because of new observation techniques, such as rawinsonde, meteorological satellites, radar, numerical forecasts, information services through radio and television, and the service of structures including river improvement and erosion and torrent control works. We have found, however, that recent severe tropical storms, the cyclone in Bangladesh in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005, generated massive destruction. In regard to typhoons, several time-period variations appear in the genetic numbers during 1951-2005: interannual frequency, interdecadal frequency, and long-term trends. This suggests that typhoons and hurricanes have become activated and this should relate to the recent global warming over the past 30 years. Therefore it is necessary to confirm how tropical storm activity will change in the future as a result of climate variability and fluctuation. The third report of the IPCC (the United Nation s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) indicates that water-related disasters resulting from severe weather will change in quality in association with global warming. With the recent development of satellite remote sensing, ground and aircraft observations, numerical simulation techniques, and the investigations of global climate change, the relationship between global warming and tropical storms and, furthermore, their related disasters are making progress. Under these situations, our group planned to conduct a project, entitled Study on extreme weather events and water-related disasters as a result of climate variability and changes, to make use of projecting a long-term change of water-related disasters from 2002 to 2004. Based on our group s recent research and the related studies of other institute researchers in Japan, we prepared the results of tropical cyclones as recent reviews for publication as a book, Water-Related Disasters; Climate Variability and Change: Results of Severe Tropical Storms in East Asia. In this work, we introduce new numerical and data-analysis research concerning the relationship between East Asia s climate variability and changes and tropical storms, the storms by themselves, and the water-related disasters they cause. The first paper, Climate Changes and Tropical Storms in the Western North Pacific, reviews the general overview of typhoon classifications, developing mechanisms, structures, climatologies, and their disasters. The second paper, The Structure of Tropical Cyclones, addresses three stages: developing stage in general, mature stage, and developing stage in detail. The third paper, Extratropical Response to Typhoon-Induced Convective Heating over the Western North Pacific in Summer, is a new insight into how the typhoons are generated over the tropics and how they affect the midlatitude area through teleconnection. Paper number four, The Relationship Between ENSO and a Tropical Cyclone Simulated in a CGCM, deals with the characteristics of typhoon activity during the El Niño and La Niña periods. The fifth paper, Global Warming and Tropical Storms. Simulations Using General Circulation Models, presents the hot topic of tropical storm activity when global warming occurs. Paper number six, Potential Hydrologic Change Resulting from Greenhouse Warming, is a downscaling result of CGCM to a regional atmospheric model for global warming simulation. The seventh paper, The Influences of Climate Change in the Frequencies of Storm Rainfalls and Flood Disasters, addresses the particularly heavy rain caused by ENSO and typhoons in Japan. This paper also describes the impacts of global warming on heavy precipitation frequency and the flood risk of the Tama River Basin in Japan. The final paper in the book, Changes in Wave Climate in the Western North Pacific, presents a study of interannual variability and a future projection of summertime wave heights in the western North Pacific. We hope this book will be read and referred to not only by researchers of tropical cyclones and by climatologists, but also by the wider scientific community of researchers, science managers, and graduate students.