Climate change has been linked to the increased rainfall and intensity of Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) that killed over 6,000 people in the Philippines in 2013, according to researchers from the World Weather Attribution on Thursday.
Researchers noted the increase in maximum winds during Yolanda’s onslaught.
One of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, Yolanda ripped through most of the Visayas, particularly Leyte and Samar, on November 8, 2013, with sustained winds of up to 314 kilometers per hour.
“Using a ‘pseudo-global warming’ approach….the maximum winds from Haiyan were increased by 2 m/s relative to pre-industrial times (alongside similar increases for Typhoons Bopha and Mangkhut),” the new study read.
“Using a completely different approach, the stochastic storm model IRIS gives an increase of 3 m/s for Haiyan due to human-induced warming.”
It also generated storm surges of about 5 meters, with up to 7.5 meters peaks in some coastal areas in Tacloban City, Leyte, which accounted for some of the fatalities.
With this, the study said that the increase in Yolanda’s intensity also led to enhanced storm surges.
''To quantify the effect of human-caused warming on the weather events, scientists analyzed weather data and climate models using peer-reviewed methods to compare how these types of events have changed between a climate with human-caused warming and the cooler pre-industrial climate,'' the World Weather Attribution said.
—VBL, GMA Integrated News
