Hurricanes, storms, typhoons... Is September wetter than usual?

Emilie Bickerton - Agence France-Presse

September 27, 2024 | 11:29am

Residents wade through heavy flooding along Felix Avenue and inner roads at the boundary of Cainta and Pasig City due to intense rain brought by tropical storm Enteng and the enhanced Habagat on Sept. 2, 2024.

The STAR/Miguel de Guzman

PARIS, France — With typhoon Yagi, locally in the Philippines as Enteng, battering Asia, storm Boris drenching parts of Europe, extreme flooding in the Sahel and hurricane Helene racing towards Florida, September so far has been a very wet month.

But while scientists can link some extreme weather events directly to human-caused global warming, it remains too early to draw clear conclusions about this sodden month.

"You will always have some sort of extreme weather events, but their intensity has been magnified by global warming, especially in the context of rainfall," Paulo Ceppi from Imperial College London's Grantham Institute told AFP on Thursday.

"That's probably one of the common drivers of these different events in very different parts of the world."

Early indications from monthly data show some record-breaking precipitation levels in the regions affected.

In central Europe, the torrential rains accompanying storm Boris were "the heaviest ever recorded" in the region, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists, inundating homes and farmland.

Global warming has doubled the likelihood of severe four-day downpours since the pre-industrial era and the costs of climate change are "accelerating", WWA said in a report published Wednesday.

Meanwhile in Japan's city of Wajima, more than 120 millimetres (4.7 inches) of rainfall per hour from typhoon Yagi was recorded on the morning of September 21 -- the heaviest rain since comparative data became available in 1929.

Hotter, and wetter?

"Attributing different weather patterns around the world at the same time to climate change is very challenging," said Liz Stephens, science lead at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

"But the fundamental principle remains that for every 1 degree Celsius of warming the atmosphere can hold seven percent more moisture," she told AFP.

With global warming on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times "you can do the math pretty quickly and that will have a measurable impact," said Ceppi from the Grantham Institute.

The 2024 northern summer saw the highest global temperatures ever recorded, beating last year's record, according to the EU's climate monitor Copernicus.

A hotter planet, in other words, could also signal a wetter one.

The sweltering summer in the Mediterranean this year "gives a lot of extra evaporation, pumping more water vapour into Europe if the conditions are right and allowing for all that moisture to be dumped in certain places," Ceppi said.

"The global temperatures -- both over the land and the ocean -- were anomalously high during August-September despite La Nina-like conditions evolving in the Pacific," Roxy Mathew Koll at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology told AFP.

"Anomalously high temperatures assist in supplying additional heat and moisture for storms and weather systems to intensify."

La Nina refers to a naturally-occurring climate phenomenon that cools the ocean surface temperatures in large swathes of the tropical Pacific Ocean, coupled with winds, rains and changes in atmospheric pressure.

In many locations, especially in the tropics, La Nina produces the opposite climate impacts to El Nino, which heats up the surface of the oceans, leading to drought in some parts of the world and triggering heavy downpours elsewhere.

Currently, "neutral" conditions prevail, meaning neither El Nino nor La Nina are present.

Large swaths of South America and Southern Africa suffered from drought in 2024.

The global September update from Copernicus is due early next month and will provide hard data on precipitation levels.

3 storms may hit PH until end of July

By Arlie O. Calalo, Manila Times

THERE may be two to three tropical storms that will possibly enter the country within the month of July, according to weather specialist Benison Estareja of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).

A storm is a violent disturbance of the atmosphere with strong winds and usually rain or snow or thunder, among others.

The state-run weather agency will be closely monitoring the storms, Estareja said on Friday.

He also said the low pressure area (LPA) that stayed in the Philippine area of responsibility (PAR) for a couple of days has dissipated, and a generally fair-weather condition is expected until over the weekend.

The southwest monsoon or habagat will be experienced particularly in the western section of Northern Luzon and Central Luzon until the weekend, Estareja added.

"It's good news for us because we will have a generally fair weather condition as we are not expecting any storm or even an LPA that may enter PAR until over the weekend," Estareja said in an interview with The Manila Times.

Pagasa said the southwest monsoon is bringing cloudy skies with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms to Western Visayas.

Metro Manila and the rest of the country will likely have partly cloudy to cloudy skies with isolated rain showers or thunderstorms mostly in the western section of Luzon caused by the habagat and localized thunderstorms, the weather bureau added.

Philippines to Simplify Weather Warnings to Reduce Loss of Lives

The Philippines will simplify its weather warnings to make them easier to understand in order to prevent the annual loss of hundreds of lives from natural calamities, officials said Wednesday.

The state weather service of one of the world’s most disaster-prone nations is working with linguists to ensure that the threat posed by typhoons, floods and other events would be fully understood by people, they said.

“People need to be told in a language they can understand the dangers that they face,” said Roberto Añonuevo, executive director of the government’s Filipino Language Commission.

“Typhoons and storms are a common occurrence, so they become complacent. This will help them to respond. This is potentially life-saving,” he told AFP.

Giant walls of seawater, called “storm surges” generated by Haiyan, the strongest ever typhoon to hit land, were blamed for most of the 7,350 lives lost in the central Philippines a year ago.

Even though the hardest-hit areas were warned beforehand, the weather service and other officials later admitted that the victims were unfamiliar with the term “storm surge”, which they said failed to adequately convey the deadly threat.

President Benigno S. C. Aquino III has been among the weather service’s most severe critics, often lecturing its forecasters publicly to use layman’s terms in its bulletins.

About 20 typhoons and storms hit the country each year, triggering floods and landslides that kill hundreds.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are also an ever-present threat in the Asian archipelago that forms part of a “Ring of Fire” of Pacific islands formed by volcanic activity.

“People with lower levels of education at times have trouble understanding technical terms,” conceded Lani Aquino, a public relations officer for the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical & Astronomical Services Administration.

“So what happens is they do not make the necessary precautions for certain meteorological events,” Ms. Aquino, no relation to the President, told AFP.

The weather service spokeswoman said it was reviewing a 300-word glossary of more easily understood weather terms prepared by the language commission, including the words for storm surges in the country’s major dialects. -- AFP

Natural Disaster in Mindanao

 The tropical storm Washi (Sendong) struck the northern coast of Mindanao with very heavy rain in a region not accustomed to typhoons, causing rivers to burst their banks, sweeping many residents out to the sea.

The cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro were transformed into mud-filled waterways choked with vehicles and downed trees.

Also Davao City, where I am residing was placed under unusual Storm Signal One. Heavy down pours followed. Storms are indeed rare this far south of the country, and Davaoenos have always boasted that the city is free of storms and typhoons...

Climate changes?!

Storms - let's enjoy cooler climate in the Philippines?

It will be cooler but stormy for the third quarter here in the Philippines. This forecast has been issued by Dr. Prisco Nilo, the country's top meteorologist just weeks after the Philippine Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) failed to provide the precise path of the typhoon Basyang, the second to hit the country this year and knocked out power supply in most of the metropolis. 

I also postponed my next trip to Manila expecting the next typhoon.

Anyway, ill-equipped or not, PAGASA said the third quarter sees the continuing cooling across the equatorial Pacific. A God's blessing for the Philippines? Let's wait and see and have a cup of tea. 

The south west monsoon should peak any time between now and September.... .Anywhere from seven to ten tropical cyclones are likely to develop and enter the Philippin Area of Responsibility during the quarter. 

I just watch the news: Pakistan, China - and even Germany and Poland... .