More severe storms and heavy summer rains can be expected in Taiwan over the next 10 years, a team of researchers from National Taiwan University (NTU) said yesterday, citing a recent study they conducted in the South Pacific Ocean. The study found a correlation between rising temperatures in the vast ocean and increasing summer rainfall in Taiwan, said one of the team leaders, Shen Chuan-chou (沈川洲), a professor at NTU’s Department of Geosciences.
The Pacific Ocean is the largest in the world and plays an important role in climate change, he said.
In the study, the researchers analyzed strontium and calcium ratios in coral reef skeletons and used uranium-thorium dating methods on coral reef cores to reconstruct 350 years of sea surface temperature data in the Pacific dating from 1649 to 1999, Shen said. It was found that as temperatures in the South Pacific increased, it prevented cold air from settling, which weakened an atmospheric circulation system known as the Hadley cell in the southern hemisphere, Shen said. With a weakened Hadley cell, water vapor tends to shift north causing an increase in summer rainfall in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, he said.
Photo courtesy of Shen Chuan-chou
After analyzing data, the research team determined that the sea surface temperature in the South Pacific has a cycle of between 14 and 19 years. The researchers concluded that if the climate change model does not change in the next 10 years, the ocean’s temperature will continue to rise. This would result in stronger storms and a greater likelihood of their occurrence in Taiwan, Shen said.
In addition, it is expected that over the next 10 years, seasonal summer rains in the region will become markedly more severe, he added. Shen suggested the Taiwan government should sek to implement disaster prevention policies and measures as soon as possible.
The research team’s findings and suggestions were published on June 24 in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching