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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight.
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Key developments
China’s emissions flat in Q3
Q3 ANALYSIS: Citing official and commercial data, analysis for Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that China’s emissions “stayed at, or just below, last year’s levels” in the third quarter (Q3) of 2024. The analysis explained that rapid electricity demand growth caused a coal-power rebound, but this was offset by falling demand for oil, steel and cement, along with weak consumer spending due to the sluggish economy. After a rise in Q1 and a decrease in Q2, the latest trends mean China’s overall emissions in 2024 would fall if there is a drop of at least 2% in the final quarter, the analysis found. It said this looked likely, but that recent economic stimulus creates uncertainty around the outlook. It added that, either way, China will “remain off track against its 2025 ‘carbon intensity’ target [energy consumption per unit of GDP], which requires emissions cuts of at least 2% in 2024 and 2025, after rapid rises in 2020-23”.
MISSING TARGETS?: Official data reported by state news agency Xinhua also hinted that China may fail to meet its “energy intensity” target, with China’s electricity consumption growing 7.9%, faster than the GDP growth rate of 4.8% so far this year. Meanwhile, China’s top planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, continues to prepare for the switch from “dual control” of energy – covering energy use and energy intensity –to “dual control” of emissions, issuing a new work plan on establishing a “national-level and provincial-level carbon reporting system” by 2025, said China News. (Read more about the switch to “dual control” of emissions in a previous China Briefing.)
EU’s EV tariffs entered into force
STEEP TARIFFS: The EU’s new tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) kicked in on 30 October, after talks between Brussels and Beijing failed to find an amicable solution to the months-long trade dispute, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. The final duty rates for the next five years were confirmed at between 7.8% and 35.3% – on top of a baseline 10% that applies to all EV imports – depending on whether the relevant firm is deemed to have cooperated with the EU probe, said the newspaper. (Read more in Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the global “trade war” over China’s booming EV industry.)
REACTIONS: The Associated Press quoted European Commission executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis defending the move: “We’re standing up for fair market practices and for the European industrial base. In parallel, we remain open to a possible alternative solution that would be effective in addressing the problems identified and (World Trade Organization)-compatible.” The Chinese government said it has “repeatedly pointed out” that the EU’s move was “unreasonable and non-compliant”, adding that it did “not agree with or accept the ruling”, according to Xinhua. China has “filed a complaint” with the WTO, said business news outlet Yicai.
Steel ‘overcapacity’ persisted
STEEL SLOWDOWN: The latest data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed China’s steel sector is among sectors “bearing the brunt of the nation’s economic slowdown”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet said the steel industry had seen cumulative losses of 34bn yuan ($5bn) in the first nine months of the year, while the oil sector saw losses of 32bn yuan ($4.5bn). Xinyi Shen, China team lead at the CREA, said in a LinkedIn post that steel sector losses continued in the third quarter despite a “significant production cut”. The losses illustrated “persistent structural overcapacity” in the sector, Shen wrote. With global markets shifting towards “greener and more efficient production practices, China’s steel industry must adapt and innovate for sustainable growth”, she added.
STEEL RETROFITS: Meanwhile, more than 140 steel enterprises, whose steelmaking capacity exceeded 620m tonnes, completed “ultra-low emission retrofitting” over the period January to August 2024, according to data from the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), state broadcaster CCTV reported. It added that the CISA had set new standards for “low-carbon emission steel” and said that deployment of “high-grade steel materials” can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 1.35bn tonnes (GtCO2) by 2030.
STEEL RECYCLING: Meanwhile, China launched a state-owned resources recycling company that “risks weighing down demand for metals, reported Bloomberg. China Resources Recycling Group will recycle steel scrap, as well as batteries and plastics, among other materials, the outlet said. The initiative has support from president Xi Jinping, said state news agency Xinhua. State-run newspaper China Daily anticipated the company would recycle 260m tonnes of scrap steel and iron annually. A recent action plan for the manufacturing industry by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also set a goal for recycling 62% of “bulk industrial solid waste” by 2030, with 20% of “short-process steelmaking” relying on recycling, reported CCTV. The plan also said that, by 2030, the output of “green factories” will account for more than 40% of the total manufacturing value, added the state broadcaster. Lauri Myllyvirta, author of the above-mentioned emissions analysis for Carbon Brief, described the move as “very important” on LinkedIn, adding that steel was China’s second-largest emitting sector and had the potential, via increased recycling and other measures, to cut its emissions by “by a third or more over the next decade”.
Xi told BRICS to advance ‘low-carbon transformation’
KAZAN DECLARATION: The BRICS group of nations that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – a bloc representing around 37% of global GDP and 42% of greenhouse gas emissions – issued a joint statement “reiterat[ing] that the objectives, principles and provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Kyoto Protocol and its Paris Agreement…must be honoured”, state news agency Xinhua reported. The agreement added that such considerations must include “its principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities”. In language likely directed towards the EU’s “carbon border adjustment mechanism” (CBAM), the nations “[condemned] unilateral measures introduced under the pretext of climate and environmental concerns”, the statement said.
‘GREEN’ BRICS: State-run newspaper China Daily said Xi told the summit that China was “willing to expand cooperation with BRICS countries in green industries, clean energy and green mining”. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted him telling other delegates: “Green is the background colour of this era. BRICS countries should actively integrate into the global green and low-carbon transformation.” The UN said secretary general António Guterres told the meeting that the BRICS could “play a greater role in strengthening multilateralism” and “urged the bloc to…boost climate action”.
BRI ENERGY PLAN: Meanwhile, a ministerial-level meeting on energy in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), convened in China by the National Energy Administration (NEA), resulted in an action plan for “green energy cooperation” between 2024 and 2029, China Daily reported. The action plan, state broadcaster CCTV said, focused on efforts to enhance countries’ ability to guarantee secure supply of “green energy”, particularly through cooperation on “hydrogen, new energy storage and advanced nuclear power”.
Spotlight
What to expect in China’s climate pledge for 2035
The next round of “nationally determined contributions” (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, outlining countries’ climate goals to 2035, are due by February 2025.
They are also set to be an important agenda item at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan next month.
China has not confirmed when it will publish its next NDC. Several groups, including Climate Action Tracker, the International Energy Agency and the Centre for Research on Energy and Air, have set out what it would take to align China’s targets with the 1.5C limit or its existing national goals.
In this Spotlight, Carbon Brief asks leading experts what they expect to see in China’s 2035 NDC. Below are highlights from their answers. Their full responses will be published on Carbon Brief’s website shortly.
Todd Stern, senior fellow, the Brookings Institution and former US special envoy for climate change, in response to a question from Carbon Brief at a Chatham House event:
China is the most important country in the world right now, with respect to their [climate] target. I think that other major players – the US, EU, Japan, Canada, Korea, Australia – are…going to put in pretty ambitious, pretty strong targets of the kind that you want to see.
China now accounts for 30% of global emissions and is basically peaking carbon emissions about now…if not this year then next year. People at the Asia Society and elsewhere have done analysis…basically saying that, in order to be where we need to be, we need to see something like a 30% reduction from China. I am sure this is certainly not what the Chinese are thinking of at the moment, but we’ll see how much of a chance there is to move. If the Chinese come in with a 5-10% target, it will be very bad.
Yao Zhe, global policy advisor, Greenpeace East Asia:
So far, Chinese policymakers have taken a cautious approach, obviously constrained by the challenges in the domestic economy. But, in fact, stronger climate action and more ambitious targets are unmistakably an economic boon for China.
An update of the renewable energy target is expected in China’s new NDC. A stronger target for the next 5-10 years will help expand the domestic market and give industry and investors the confidence they need. It will also lay the groundwork for an ambitious NDC…However, China’s clean-energy potential can only be fully realised with clearer plans to move away from fossil fuels…The new NDC should address this by committing to no new coal power.
Anders Hove, senior research fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies:
China’s past NDCs have tended to reflect trends underway and highlighted concrete targets that are already on-track to be met, rather than adopting ambitious new goals…A modest NDC would likely highlight targets related to renewable energy as a share of electricity production, continued steady growth in wind and solar capacity, and possibly electric vehicle adoption.
Byford Tsang, senior policy fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations:
A reading of policy signals from the recent past suggests that China’s upcoming climate target is going to be conservative: coal-plant approvals spiked in the years following a pledge to “strictly limit” coal power; official data showing that China is on-track to miss its own 2025 carbon intensity targets; and the country’s top energy agency has proposed an annual installation target that would slow down clean-energy deployment.
Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub, Asia Society Policy Institute:
At least three variables will determine the quality of China’s headline commitment: the quantum [the minimum amount] of emissions reduction; the base year from which emissions will be reduced; and the sectoral and greenhouse gas coverage…Chinese decision-makers could plant ambiguities in any, none, or all these variables.
Some believe China will adopt its emissions peak as the base year for its 2035 target…This formulation could see China not specifying when and at what level its emissions will peak…[and could] make the question of when, and based on what conditions, Beijing will confirm its emission peak ever more important. Currently, Beijing’s policymakers do not believe China’s emissions have peaked.
Niklas Höhne, part of the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) and NewClimate Institute, and and Bill Hare, co-founder and CEO of Climate Analytics, and part of CAT:
Amid discussions on China setting a percentage reduction target from peak emission levels, CAT recommends basing the 2035 NDC on a historical baseline…CAT’s modelled domestic pathways indicate that China needs to reduce emissions by 55% by 2030 and by 66% by 2035 from 2023 levels to align with the Paris Agreement. A minimum 28% reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 is crucial for China to stay on-track for its 2060 net-zero target.
Hu Min, director and co-founder, Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP) and Chen Meian, senior program director and senior analyst, iGDP:
China’s new NDC is expected to reflect heightened domestic momentum for decarbonisation…The new NDC might also reflect ongoing domestic adjustments to the system for evaluating mitigation progress, such as by including a carbon-budget system. This would be an encouraging move to address absolute carbon mitigation instead of [carbon] intensity.
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and senior fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute:
If it allows emissions to grow until just before 2030 and pursues slow and gradual emission reductions thereafter, China alone would use up almost the entire global carbon budget for 1.5C…As long as the policymakers think in terms of a late 2020s peak, there is little time to reduce emissions from that peak by 2035…While China needs to reduce emissions by at least 30% from 2023 to 2035…it seems more likely that the decision-makers will target a reduction that is a fraction of this, falling short of what’s needed to get to carbon neutrality before 2060.
Lu Lunyan, CEO, WWF China:
We hope China will consider setting clear and ambitious targets for total greenhouse gas emissions, including non-CO2 gases, such as methane, alongside increasing the share of non-fossil fuels, and aligning with the Paris Agreement on the path to net-zero. In addition, sector-specific decarbonisation strategies, particularly for heavy industries, transportation and power generation, will be crucial to achieving meaningful emissions reduction.
This spotlight was compiled by Anika Patel.
Watch, read, listen
US-CHINA: US thinktank the Brookings Institution said in a commentary that the “next US administration’s challenges with China on climate change are threefold”: maintaining climate progress; accelerating the US energy transition; and “continuing to press for forward movement on China’s emissions reductions efforts”.
LIU’S CONFIDENCE: At an Arctic Circle climate action summit, Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin said China was “confident” it would peak emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060.
‘GREEN’ TRANSITION: Beijing Daily published an analysis on economic reform, technology innovation and “green transition” by economist Liu Shijin, former member of China’s National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and former deputy president of the State Council’s Development Research Center.
EV COMEITITION: The Financial Times reported that Chinese EV giant BYD’s quarterly sales overtook the US’s leading EV producer Tesla for the first time.
230 billion
TChina’s economic losses due to “natural disasters” between July and September 2024, in yuan, equivalent to $32bn, as reported by Reuters. The figure is based on data from the Ministry of Emergency Management and Reuters calculated that the loss in the third quarter of 2024 was more than double that in the first half of the year. It said total losses of 323bn yuan ($45bn) in 2024 to date were higher than the 308bn a year earlier.
New science
Asia Pacific Science Press
A new study on the city of Wenzhou, in Zhejiang province in east China, examined the “low-carbon transition of modern cities” under China’s “dual-carbon” strategy. It found that Wenzhou has adjusted its energy structure by “vigorously developing” renewable energy sources, guided local enterprises to adopt energy-saving technologies, as well as integrated the “low-carbon concept” into urban planning. The study concluded that these methods – technology adaptation, policy support as well as “talent cultivation and recruitment” strategy – are “validated” for cities’ low-carbon transition in China.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 31 October 2024: Q3 emissions; EU’s EV tariff in effect; NDC expectations appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 31 October 2024: Q3 emissions; EU’s EV tariff in effect; NDC expectations
N.C. Gov. Josh Stein wants state lawmakers to rethink tax breaks for data centers. The industry’s opacity makes it difficult to evaluate costs and benefits.
Tax breaks for data centers in North Carolina keep as much as $57 million each year into from state and local government coffers, state figures show, an amount that could balloon to billions of dollars if all the proposed projects are built.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multilateral fund that provides climate and nature finance to developing countries, has raised $3.9 billion from donor governments in its last pledging session ahead of a key fundraising deadline at the end of May.
The amount, which is meant to cover the fund’s activities for the next four years (July 2026-June 2030), falls significantly short of the previous four-year cycle for which the GEF managed to raise $5.3bn from governments. Since then, military and other political priorities have squeezed rich nations’ budgets for climate and development aid.
The facility said in a statement that it expects more pledges ahead of the final replenishment package, which is set for approval at the next GEF Council meeting from May 31 to June 3.
Claude Gascon, interim CEO of the GEF, said that “donor countries have risen to the challenge and made bold commitments towards a more positive future for the planet”. He added that the pledges send a message that “the world is not giving up on nature even in a time of competing priorities”.
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Italy pushes coal exit back after gas prices rise
Analysts say the move sends a negative signal, but its impact will be limited given coal’s marginal role in Italy’s energy mix
Donors under pressure
But Brian O’Donnell, director of the environmental non-profit Campaign for Nature, said the announcement shows “an alarming trend” of donor governments cutting public finance for climate and nature.
“Wealthy nations pledged to increase international nature finance, and yet we are seeing cuts and lower contributions. Investing in nature prevents extinctions and supports livelihoods, security, health, food, clean water and climate,” he said. “Failing to safeguard nature now will result in much larger costs later.”
At COP29 in Baku, developed countries pledged to mobilise $300bn a year in public climate finance by 2035, while at UN biodiversity talks they have also pledged to raise $30bn per year by 2030. Yet several wealthy governments have announced cuts to green finance to increase defense spending, among them most recently the UK.
As for the US, despite Trump’s cuts to international climate finance, Congress approved a $150 million increase in its contribution to the GEF after what was described as the organisation’s “refocus on non-climate priorities like biodiversity, plastics and ocean ecosystems, per US Treasury guidance”.
The facility will only reveal how much each country has pledged when its assembly of 186 member countries meets in early June. The last period’s largest donors were Germany ($575 million), Japan ($451 million), and the US ($425 million).
The GEF has also gone through a change in leadership halfway through its fundraising cycle. Last December, the GEF Council asked former CEO Carlos Manuel Rodriguez to step down effective immediately and appointed Gascon as interim CEO.
Santa Marta conference: fossil fuel transition in an unstable world
New guidelines
As part of the upcoming funding cycle, the GEF has approved a set of guidelines for spending the $3.9bn raised so far, which include allocating 35% of resources for least developed countries and small island states, as well as 20% of the money going to Indigenous people and communities.
Its programs will help countries shift five key systems – nature, food, urban, energy and health – from models that drive degradation to alternatives that protect the planet and support human well-being by integrating the value of nature into production and consumption systems.
The new priorities also include a target to allocate 25% of the GEF’s budget for mobilising private funds through blended finance. This aligns with efforts by wealthy countries to increase contributions from the private sector to international climate finance.
Niels Annen, Germany’s State Secretary for Economic Cooperation and Development, said in a statement that the country’s priorities are “very well reflected” in the GEF’s new spending guidelines, including on “innovative finance for nature and people, better cooperation with the private sector, and stable resources for the most vulnerable countries”.
Aliou Mustafa, of the GEF Indigenous Peoples Advisory Group (IPAG), also welcomed the announcement, adding that “the GEF is strengthening trust and meaningful partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and local communities” by placing them at the “centre of decision-making”.
The post GEF raises $3.9bn ahead of funding deadline, $1bn below previous budget appeared first on Climate Home News.
GEF raises $3.9bn ahead of funding deadline, $1bn below previous budget
Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify when passing over marine heatwaves can become “supercharged”, increasing the likelihood of high economic losses, a new study finds.
Such storms also have higher rates of rainfall and higher maximum windspeeds, according to the research.
The study, published in Science Advances, looks at the economic damages caused by nearly 800 tropical cyclones that occurred around the world between 1981 and 2023.
It finds that rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones that pass near abnormally warm parts of the ocean produce nearly double – 93% – the economic damages as storms that do not, even when levels of coastal development are taken into account.
One researcher, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the new analysis is a “step forward in understanding how we can better refine our predictions of what might happen in the future” in an increasingly warm world.
As marine heatwaves are projected to become more frequent under future climate change, the authors say that the interactions between storms and these heatwaves “should be given greater consideration in future strategies for climate adaptation and climate preparedness”.
‘Rapid intensification’
Tropical cyclones are rapidly rotating storm systems that form over warm ocean waters, characterised by low pressure at their cores and sustained winds that can reach more than 120 kilometres per hour.
The term “tropical cyclones” encompasses hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, which are named as such depending on which ocean basin they occur in.
When they make landfall, these storms can cause major damage. They accounted for six of the top 10 disasters between 1900 and 2024 in terms of economic loss, according to the insurance company Aon’s 2025 climate catastrophe insight report.
These economic losses are largely caused by high wind speeds, large amounts of rainfall and damaging storm surges.
Storms can become particularly dangerous through a process called “rapid intensification”.
Rapid intensification is when a storm strengthens considerably in a short period of time. It is defined as an increase in sustained wind speed of at least 30 knots (around 55 kilometres per hour) in a 24-hour period.
There are several factors that can lead to rapid intensification, including warm ocean temperatures, high humidity and low vertical “wind shear” – meaning that the wind speeds higher up in the atmosphere are very similar to the wind speeds near the surface.
Rapid intensification has become more common since the 1980s and is projected to become even more frequent in the future with continued warming. (Although there is uncertainty as to how climate change will impact the frequency of tropical cyclones, the increase in strength and intensification is more clear.)
Marine heatwaves are another type of extreme event that are becoming more frequent due to recent warming. Like their atmospheric counterparts, marine heatwaves are periods of abnormally high ocean temperatures.
Previous research has shown that these marine heatwaves can contribute to a cyclone undergoing rapid intensification. This is because the warm ocean water acts as a “fuel” for a storm, says Dr Hamed Moftakhari, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Alabama who was one of the authors of the new study. He explains:
“The entire strength of the tropical cyclone [depends on] how hot the [ocean] surface is. Marine heatwave means we have an abundance of hot water that is like a gas [petrol] station. As you move over that, it’s going to supercharge you.”
However, the authors say, there is no global assessment of how rapid intensification and marine heatwaves interact – or how they contribute to economic damages.
Using the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) – a database of tropical cyclone paths and intensities – the researchers identify 1,600 storms that made landfall during the 1981-2023 period, out of a total of 3,464 events.
Of these 1,600 storms, they were able to match 789 individual, land-falling cyclones with economic loss data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) and other official sources.
Then, using the IBTrACS storm data and ocean-temperature data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the researchers classify each cyclone by whether or not it underwent rapid intensification and if it passed near a recent marine heatwave event before making landfall.
The researchers find that there is a “modest” rise in the number of marine heatwave-influenced tropical cyclones globally since 1981, but with significant regional variations. In particular, they say, there are “clear” upward trends in the north Atlantic Ocean, the north Indian Ocean and the northern hemisphere basin of the eastern Pacific Ocean.
‘Storm characteristics’
The researchers find substantial differences in the characteristics of tropical cyclones that experience rapid intensification and those that do not, as well as between rapidly intensifying storms that occur with marine heatwaves and those that occur without them.
For example, tropical cyclones that do not experience rapid intensification have, on average, maximum wind speeds of around 40 knots (74km/hr), whereas storms that rapidly intensify have an average maximum wind speed of nearly 80 knots (148km/hr).
Of the rapidly intensifying storms, those that are influenced by marine heatwaves maintain higher wind speeds during the days leading up to landfall.
Although the wind speeds are very similar between the two groups once the storms make landfall, the pre-landfall difference still has an impact on a storm’s destructiveness, says Dr Soheil Radfar, a hurricane-hazard modeller at Princeton University. Radfar, who is the lead author of the new study, tells Carbon Brief:
“Hurricane damage starts days before the landfall…Four or five days before a hurricane making landfall, we expect to have high wind speeds and, because of that high wind speed, we expect to have storm surges that impact coastal communities.”
They also find that rapidly intensifying storms have higher peak rainfall than non-rapidly intensifying storms, with marine heatwave-influenced, rapidly intensifying storms exhibiting the highest average rainfall at landfall.
The charts below show the mean sustained wind speed in knots (top) and the mean rainfall in millimetres per hour (bottom) for the tropical cyclones analysed in the study in the five days leading up to and two days following a storm making landfall.
The four lines show storms that: rapidly intensified with the influence of marine heatwaves (red); those that rapidly intensified without marine heatwaves (purple); those that experienced marine heatwaves, but did not rapidly intensify (orange); and those that neither rapidly intensified nor experienced a marine heatwave (blue).
Dr Daneeja Mawren, an ocean and climate consultant at the Mauritius-based Mascarene Environmental Consulting who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the new study “helps clarify how marine heatwaves amplify storm characteristics”, such as stronger winds and heavier rainfall. She notes that this “has not been done on a global scale before”.
However, Mawren adds that other factors not considered in the analysis can “make a huge difference” in the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones, including subsurface marine heatwaves and eddies – circular, spinning ocean currents that can trap warm water.
Dr Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University who was also not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that, while the intensification found by the study “makes physical sense”, it is inherently limited by the relatively small number of storms that occur. He adds:
“There’s not that many storms, to tease out the physical mechanisms and observational data. So being able to reproduce this kind of work in a physical model would be really important.”
Economic costs
Storm intensity is not the only factor that determines how destructive a given cyclone can be – the economic damages also depend strongly on the population density and the amount of infrastructure development where a storm hits. The study explains:
“A high storm surge in a sparsely populated area may cause less economic damage than a smaller surge in a densely populated, economically important region.”
To account for the differences in development, the researchers use a type of data called “built-up volume”, from the Global Human Settlement Layer. Built-up volume is a quantity derived from satellite data and other high-resolution imagery that combines measurements of building area and average building height in a given area. This can be used as a proxy for the level of development, the authors explain.
By comparing different cyclones that impacted areas with similar built-up volumes, the researchers can analyse how rapid intensification and marine heatwaves contribute to the overall economic damages of a storm.
They find that, even when controlling for levels of coastal development, storms that pass through a marine heatwave during their rapid intensification cause 93% higher economic damages than storms that do not.
They identify 71 marine heatwave-influenced storms that cause more than $1bn (inflation-adjusted across the dataset) in damages, compared to 45 storms that cause those levels of damage without the influence of marine heatwaves.
This quantification of the cyclones’ economic impact is one of the study’s most “important contributions”, says Mawren.
The authors also note that the continued development in coastal regions may increase the likelihood of tropical cyclone damages over time.
Towards forecasting
The study notes that the increased damages caused by marine heatwave-influenced tropical cyclones, along with the projected increases in marine heatwaves, means such storms “should be given greater consideration” in planning for future climate change.
For Radfar and Moftakhari, the new study emphasises the importance of understanding the interactions between extreme events, such as tropical cyclones and marine heatwaves.
Moftakhari notes that extreme events in the future are expected to become both more intense and more complex. This becomes a problem for climate resilience because “we basically design in the future based on what we’ve observed in the past”, he says. This may lead to underestimating potential hazards, he adds.
Mawren agrees, telling Carbon Brief that, in order to “fully capture the intensification potential”, future forecasts and risk assessments must account for marine heatwaves and other ocean phenomena, such as subsurface heat.
Lin adds that the actions needed to reduce storm damages “take on the order of decades to do right”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“All these [planning] decisions have to come by understanding the future uncertainty and so this research is a step forward in understanding how we can better refine our predictions of what might happen in the future.”
The post Marine heatwaves ‘nearly double’ the economic damage caused by tropical cyclones appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Marine heatwaves ‘nearly double’ the economic damage caused by tropical cyclones
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