While the nation suffers the severest water shortage in 68 years, at least six tropical storms have formed in the northwest Pacific Ocean since January, a record high in more than four decades, a former Central Weather Bureau forecaster said.
A majority of the nation’s rain falls during the plum rain season this month and next month, as well as the typhoon season from July to September.
Daniel Wu (吳德榮), a former director of the bureau’s Weather Forecast Center, said on his online column on the Web site of Chinese Television System that the six includes a tropical depression which is southwest of Guam and has strong potential of turning into a tropical storm.
The historic average number of tropical storms or typhoons forming from January to this month is 2.6, he said.
Prior to this year, Wu said, there were only two years in which more than six typhoons or tropical storms formed during the same period — eight in 1965 and nine in 1971.
He added that the total number of tropical storms or typhoons that had been formed in those two years — 33 and 35 respectively — were also higher than the annual average of 25.7.
However, Wu said that the rise in the number of tropical storms or typhoons formed in the northwest Pacific does not necessarily translate to a simultaneous increase in the number of storms or typhoons which affect Taiwan. He said that the nation was affected by three typhoons in 1965 and four in 1971, which was close to the annual average of 3.5.
He also dismissed the impact of the El Nino effect on the increased number of tropical storms and typhoons forming in the northwest Pacific.
“So far, the tropical storms or typhoons have formed at locations near the Philippines or Guam, rather than the Central Pacific, which generally provides more advantageous conditions for a tropical storm to be formed when the El Nino effect prevails,” Wu said. “Meanwhile, the storms or typhoons have moved northwestward, rather than north. One can only say that warm sea temperatures support the development of tropical storms, but the recurrence of the phenomenon cannot be explained by the El Nino effect.”
Wu said that two frontal systems scheduled to arrive this week are different from the stationary fronts normally seen in the plum rain season. He said the first front was forecast to bring rain nationwide yesterday and today.
He said that the weather will likely clear tomorrow as the first system moves away, but that it would be followed by a second system on Thursday. The rainfall, he said, might be less because it is a weaker system due to the influence of high pressure over the Pacific.
The bureau said the latest tropical storm would be called Noul, named by the weather bureau in North Korea.
As the tropical depression is about 2,600km from Taiwan, the bureau said it requires further observation before it could forecast whether it would pose a threat to the nation.
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