Sea surface temperature warming to inhibit mitigation of tropical cyclone destructiveness over East Asia in El Niño

초록

Given their conditions to reside in and intensify longer over warm oceans, tropical cyclones (TCs) in the western North Pacific (WNP) present a stronger lifetime maximum intensity during El Nino than during La Nina. By using observational data, we found that the anomalously cool sea surface temperature (SST)s in the basin act as effective barriers against intense TCs approaching East Asia during El Nino, weakening their destructiveness at landfall. Based on our high-resolution pseudo-global-warming simulations, the basin-wide 2K SST warming within the WNP basin can, however, shatter this cool SST barrier, exposing East Asia to more destructive TCs during El Nino, compared to those during La Nina. Considering that the 2K warmer WNP will likely occur in the mid-21st century under a high emission scenario and in the late 21st century under a moderate emission scenario, our findings support that more aggressive efforts of global warming mitigation are needed.

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