From late October to November this year, six consecutive tropical cyclones battered the Philippines, affecting 30 million people. Data analyses from two separate organizations now show they were intensified by human-induced climate change. International scientific collective World Weather Attribution (WWA) released a study on Dec. 12 showing that climate change has made conditions conducive to the formation of typhoons twice as likely. It also found the likelihood of stronger typhoons, those in categories 3-5 (on a scale of 1-5), hitting the Philippines increased by 25% this year due to climate change. “This later part of the 2024 [Philippine] typhoon season was extraordinary,” study co-author Clair Barnes, a researcher at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute, said at an online press briefing. “There were five typhoons and a tropical storm that affected the country within just 30 days. At one point in November, there were four typhoons active simultaneously in the Pacific Basin, which is the first time this has happened since records began in the ’50s.” Barnes said only three storms normally form in the Pacific Basin in November. Co-author Ben Clarke, from Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy, said the team used observations of past cyclones and climate models. “So from these two analyses, we find that the conditions in which the storms developed in 2024 have become about 70% more likely due to warming of 1.3° [Celsius, or 2.3° Fahrenheit],” he said. “The chance of multiple major typhoons making landfall will continue to increase as long as we…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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