Abnormal Typhoon Season in the Philippines ‘Supercharged’ by Climate Change: Report

An abnormally active typhoon season that hit the Philippines this year was “supercharged” by climate change, according to a new attribution study published Thursday by the World Weather Attribution (WWA).

The report found that climate change exacerbated the conditions that led to the typhoon season and made the formation of typhoons nearly twice as likely.

The team noted that six major storms hit the country in less than a month, including five typhoons and one major tropical cyclone — an anomaly compared to the three average typhoons the country experiences in an entire year.

The storms, which killed more than 170 people, formed in a span of 23 days from late October to mid-November, each hitting Luzon, the country’s largest and most populated island, and impacted more than 13 million people, the study says.

Ben Clarke, a researcher at the WWA and the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, wrote in a press release, “While it is unusual to see so many typhoons hit the Philippines in less than a month, the conditions that gave rise to these storms are increasing as the climate warms.

The researchers used their standard parameter of “potential intensity,” or their evaluation of the maximum wind speed possible under certain conditions, to evaluate the extent to which climate change affected the storms.

“It was therefore appropriate to study an area over the ocean just to the east of the Philippines, in which all of the storms that affected the Philippines developed,” Clarke told EcoWatch in an email.

The potential intensity is calculated using both real-world observations and large-scale computer models of storms.

Clarke told reporters in a video conference that the researchers also calculated the storms’ wind speeds using their IRIS storm model and combined that with their “understanding of of the physics and the factors that are really important for cyclone intensity.”

“So from these 2 analyses,” Clarke said, “we find that the conditions in which the storms developed in 2024 have become about 70% more likely due to warming of 1.3 degrees. That means that the storms were more likely to develop more strongly and reach the Philippines at a higher intensity than they otherwise would have.”

“On the hazard side,” Clarke wrote in an email, “the biggest takeaways are that the conditions in which these storms all developed are more likely due to climate change (mostly but probably not entirely because of ocean heating) and that the Philippines should expect more years in which more than three major typhoons make landfall.” 

Afrhill Rances, a regional communications manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Philippines, said in the press briefing that this year’s typhoon season revealed significant vulnerabilities and heightened exposure to climate impact in the Philippines, especially in Luzon.

Rances cited urban sprawl, deforestation and river silting as factors leading to “compounding risks” for rural communities and cities in Luzon.

The report also looked into what future typhoon seasons might look like under warmer conditions, Clarke said. “At 2.6 degrees of global warming — which is kind of the optimistic side of what we’re currently on track for given implemented national policies — we would find that these conditions will increase by about 40% again, compared to now. And that’s in likelihood. So we’ll see them 40% more often, and this is likely a relatively conservative estimate.”