Climate change attribution of Typhoon Haiyan with the Imperial College Storm Model
Author(s)
Sparks, Nathan
Toumi, Ralf
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
It is difficult to model changes in the likelihood of tropical cyclones under climate change to date. We do this, for the first time, by a applying a stochastic tropical cyclone event set generated by the Imperial College Storm Model to attribute the contribution of climate change to the case of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Compared to a pre-industrial baseline, we estimate that a typhoon with a landfall maximum wind speed like Haiyan was larger by +3.5 m/s. This is in good agreement with previous full physics numerical model estimates. A Haiyan type of event has a current return period of 850 years, and the fractional attributable risk due to climate change is 98%. Without climate change, this event was very unlikely. The type of information available from the IRIS model could inform subsidizing of catastrophe bond yield in the context of the loss and damage fund.
Date Issued
2025-01-01
Date Acceptance
2024-12-13
Citation
Atmospheric Science Letters, 2025, 26 (1)
ISSN
1530-261X
Publisher
Wiley
Journal / Book Title
Atmospheric Science Letters
Volume
26
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Atmospheric Science Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Meteorological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
10.1002/asl.1285
Subjects
change and impacts
climate
climate variability
Geochemistry & Geophysics
geographic/climatic zone
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
PHILIPPINES
physical phenomenon
Physical Sciences
scale
Science & Technology
severe weather
tropic
TROPICAL CYCLONES
weather/climate extremes
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e1285
Date Publish Online
2025-01-10