HomeProjectsSustainable Development and Green TechnologiesAssessing Global Warming Effects on Tropical Cyclones and Storm Surges to Hong Kong and Costal Land Area in South China

Assessing Global Warming Effects on Tropical Cyclones and Storm Surges to Hong Kong and Costal Land Area in South China

Coastal South China including Hong Kong suffer significant economic, societal and human losses due to tropical cyclones (TC) each year. As global warming intensifies, we expect it will affect future typhoons and thus storm surge at land-falling. Collaborating with the Hong Kong Observatory, the research team investigated the future changes of western North Pacific land-falling TCs and their impacts due to climate change. The team estimated that by the end of 21st century, TC mean landfall (peak) intensity will increase by 2 m/s (10 %). Over the Hong Kong waters, averaged TC-induced storm tide will increase by ~1 m. Moreover, for the southeast to east Asian coast as a whole, storms of the typhoon class or above will sustain 4.9 h longer and penetrate 92.4 km farther inland. According to the results, the government can plan their future policies in order to cope with the flooding problem caused by TC-induced storm surges, as well as the costal defence project in order to protect Hong Kong coastlines.

Description of model design
Maximum storm surge height of Typhoon Hato in current and late-21st Century climate

Uniqueness and Competitive Advantages:

  • Through high resolution computational simulations, we can resolve the terrain, coastlines and also the TCs’ structure more accurately
  • We can compare the simulation results with real historical weather data
Comparison of storm surge cumulative distribution function (CDF) changes between historical and pseudo global warming (PGW) experiments near HK waters
Rainfall Rate, wind, and Reflectivity of Typhoon Hagupit (2008) at Lifetime Maximum Intensity in Control Run and RCP8.5 Emission Scenario in the Far Future Era

Do you like our project?

MORE TO EXPLORE