In recent days four typhoons – typhoons Narra, Gaenari, Saudel and Atsani – spun their way simultaneously across the North-western Pacific and the South China Sea . An average of 13 to 14 typhoons form over the North-western Pacific and the South China Sea each year between January and August. This year has already seen 21 typhoons, well above the long‑term mean.
This hyperactive typhoon season has drawn widespread public attention: Is global warming making typhoons more frequent?
Professor Wei Ke of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an article appearing in CGTN, says that “This seemingly straightforward question involves complex ocean-atmosphere interaction”.
Professor Wei Ke writes:
Growing frequency and intensity
Theoretically, typhoons originate over warm tropical oceans. A global rise in sea‑surface temperature expands warm ocean areas and thickens upper‑ocean heat reservoirs, providing ample thermal energy for typhoon embryos to develop and intensify.
Even so, warm water is only one condition. Typhoon formation depends on a mix of meteorological conditions: favorable wind‑humidity environments and suitable initial disturbances that serve as typhoon “seeds” over appropriate ocean areas. These competing factors mean no simple link exists between global warming and total typhoon counts, leading to inconsistent research outcomes.
Adding to this complexity is typhoons’ observed self‑suppression effect. Powerful typhoon winds trigger violent vertical mixing of seawater, lifting cold deep-sea water to the surface and lowering sea surface temperatures, which effectively inhibits the genesis and intensification of subsequent typhoons.
Nevertheless, over the past three decades, scientific research has solidified an important consensus on tropical cyclone changes under global warming: the frequency and peak intensity of severe typhoons are increasing globally, backed by observations and numerical simulations. This means that violent winds, extreme rainfall and storm surges are posing growing risks to coastal and offshore communities.
Climate-driven shift
Beyond intensity shifts, global warming is reshaping the spatial behavior of typhoons. Warming expands tropical warm-water domains poleward, driving typhoon activity farther north. A typical case is Typhoon Doksuri in 2023. After landfall, its residual circulation traveled northward, unleashing record-breaking torrential rain and severe flooding across north China’s Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin and parts of northeast China.
Growing disaster destructiveness further illustrates climate‑driven shifts. The current naming system for typhoons was launched in 2000, with 14 Asia‑Pacific countries and regions vulnerable to typhoons each contributing 10 names, forming a list of 140 names used in rotation. Names are permanently retired after catastrophic damage. Historically, zero to three names are retired per year, with a long‑term average of approximately 3.3. Since 2020, however, retirements have risen sharply: nine names were retired in both 2022 and 2024, and eight in 2025. These statistics indicate a marked rise in occurrences of highly destructive extreme typhoons.
Remote impacts
Of particular concern is the growing remote impact effect of typhoons under climate change.
Without making direct landfall, typhoons can trigger extreme torrential rainfall in inland and northern China, which has become a key cause of frequent extreme rain disasters in non-coastal areas in recent years.
In the 2026 typhoon season, Typhoon Bavi and Typhoon Dolphin delivered abundant water vapor to northeast China through long-distance peripheral circulation transport. The sustained moisture supply coupled with local atmospheric instability, triggering severe torrential rain and urban waterlogging in multiple cities, fully reflecting the prominent remote disaster-causing characteristics of modern typhoons.
El Nino stretches paths of destruction
Besides the long‑term background of global warming, interannual air‑sea anomalies strongly modulate typhoon behavior, most notably El Nino events.
During El Nino, abnormally high sea‑surface temperatures across the equatorial central‑eastern Pacific shift the primary typhoon‑genesis zone of the Northwestern Pacific eastward. Typhoons forming farther east travel longer distances over the ocean, accumulating moisture and energy over extended durations and therefore tending to grow stronger and more destructive. Typhoon Dolphin in early August this year illustrates this pattern: it travelled more than 6,000 kilometres over the ocean with a lifespan of two weeks, bringing persistent wind and rain to broad areas of eastern China.
Global warming is transforming typhoon behaviour
In short, global warming does not simply mean that the world will experience more typhoons. Instead, it is profoundly transforming typhoon behavior across the Northwestern Pacific: severe typhoons are becoming more frequent and intense; typhoon activity expands northward; and highly destructive extreme cyclones occur more often. When modulated by interannual air‑sea anomalies such as El Nino, typhoon‑driven hazards exhibit greater extremity and compound‑disaster characteristics.
Faced with this new reality, we must strengthen climate monitoring, improve typhoon prediction capabilities and upgrade disaster‑prevention and mitigation systems. Only in this way can society effectively counter extreme typhoon risks and build safer defenses for both coastal and inland communities.
Source: CGTN, Aug 26, 2026. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-08-25/4-typhoons-at-once-Does-climate-change-bring-more-devastating-storms–1PU1Nf2FwIw/p.html
