Typhoons that slam into land in the northwestern Pacific — especially the biggest tropical cyclones of the bunch — have grown considerably stronger since the 1970s, a new study said on Monday.
Overall, the intensities of typhoons that make landfall have increased by about 12 percent in nearly four decades.
The change is most noticeable for storms with winds of 209kph or more — those in categories 4 and 5.
Since 1977, they have gone from a once-a-year occurrence to four times a year, according to a study in the journal Nature Geoscience.
LIONROCK, HAIYAN
These are storms like Lionrock that last month killed at least 17 people, about half of them elderly residents of a Japanese nursing home, and Haiyan — one of the strongest storms on record — which killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines in 2013.
Study lead author Wei Mei, a climate scientist at the University of North Carolina, connected the strengthening of these storms to data showing warmer seawater near coasts, which would provide more fuel for typhoons.
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
As the world warms up more, stronger storms are likely to get even more intense, especially north of 20 degrees north latitude, where Taiwan, eastern China, South Korea and Japan are, Mei said.
Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said the study makes sense and raises interesting questions, but added that some of the storms before 1987 might have had their wind speeds underestimated.
BETTER RECORDS?
Mei said he thinks that time period actually had better measurements, because planes were then flying into storms to gauge their strength.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.