Research built on hundreds of years of storm activity records showed that typhoons were most frequent in the 17th century during the “little ice age,” challenging the common belief that low temperatures inhibit the formation of typhoons.
The research was conducted by an inter-institution research team based on tropical cyclone activity in the northwest Pacific Ocean documented in historical literature, climate reconstruction data and data recorded via modern climate observation instruments, which span 543 years from 1368 to 1911.
Members of the team included Lin Kuan-hui (林冠慧), director of the Graduate Institute of Sustainability Management and Environmental Education at National Taiwan Normal University, Academia Sinica academician Wang Pao-kuan (王寶貫), National Taiwan University Ocean Center assistant researcher Tseng Wan-ling (曾琬鈴) and Academia Sinica Research Center for Environmental Changes researcher Hsu Huang-hsiung (許晃雄).
Photo: CNA
Their research showed that the number of tropical cyclones peaked from 1650 to 1680, coinciding with the Maunder Minimum during the little ice age, when solar irradiance significantly decreased and the northern hemisphere was affected by terrestrial cooling.
While terrestrial temperatures in East Asia were low during the period, seawater temperatures reconstructed from marine proxies, such as corals or sediments, showed anomalously warm sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific Ocean, it showed.
Such a thermal contrast between the land and the sea likely created a more dynamic summer monsoon circulation, which fostered favorable conditions such as increased low-level moisture transport for tropical cyclone formation, the research showed.
Lin yesterday said the findings overturned the common belief that typhoons become less frequent when the climate cools.
The study showed that the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones were not decided simply by temperatures, but affected by the broader, more complex interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere, she said.
A longer time scale should be applied to observe and understand tropical cyclone cycles and behavior, she added.
Wang said the core data of the research were sourced from the historical climate database REACHES, which was established in 2014 and funded by Academia Sinica and the National Science and Technology Council’s Sustainability Science Program.
The database helps promote intercultural, interdisciplinary climate research by enabling non-Mandarin-using international researchers to utilize Chinese historical documents, he said.
The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America journal last month.
Additional reporting by CNA
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