A review on the impacts of global warming on tropical cyclone activities.

Global warming is a hot topic, while the “extraordinary” episodes of global tropical cyclone activities in recent years are also concerned. Most of studies concentrated on two aspects: one is whether the climate character of global typhoon is changed? The other is if this change related to the global warming? An overview on this topic, which includes observational fact, cause analysis, numerical modeling, was given in this paper. Some main consensus can be concluded as: (1) No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change; (2) The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions; (3) The long term trend of frequency change of global tropical cyclone is not obvious; (4) The ratio of super-typhoon over some oceans has increased greatly since 1970, and the figure is much greater than the results of numerical modeling; (5) It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm; (6) Though there is evidence either for or against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point. On the other hand, the two main problems, i.e., the homogeneity and consistency of tropical cyclones and climate data, and the deficiency of climate model in simulating tropical cyclone climate, make it difficult to explain definitely the relation between global warming and tropical cyclone climate at current stage.