New Delhi: East Asia is enduring a succession of powerful typhoons that have killed dozens, disrupted international flights and damaged crops and infrastructure, as an intensifying El Nino reshapes weather across the Pacific. The threat extends beyond the immediate storm season, with the Philippine weather service warning that the exceptionally strong climate event could persist into the first half of 2027.
In its latest monitoring update on Wednesday, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, or Pagasa, said a very strong El Nino was already established and could peak towards the end of the year. The assessment points to continuing disruption of rainfall and temperature patterns, although the consequences will differ sharply between countries and even between regions within them.
The latest major system, Typhoon In-fa, was moving north-east over the Pacific south of Japan on November 5, with forecasts indicating that it would gradually lose its tropical characteristics. The Hong Kong Observatory expected that transition by Friday, while the US National Weather Service forecast weakening as the storm accelerated towards higher latitudes.
Champi’s passage exposes the regional toll
October’s Typhoon Champi demonstrated how a storm can disrupt several economies without its centre making landfall in each of them. At its peak, it generated sustained winds approaching 300kmph, while its passage brought damaging weather to Taiwan, Guam and parts of China and Japan.
According to a BBC report, hundreds of flights were cancelled across Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan as Champi approached, while huge waves forced seaside highways to close in the Philippines’ Batanes islands. Around 15,000 homes lost electricity in Japan’s Okinawa islands, illustrating the storm’s reach beyond the areas closest to its centre.
Taiwan avoided a direct landfall but still suffered casualties and widespread disruption. A Reuters report published on October 24 put the toll at one dead and about 500 injured, underscoring the danger from a storm’s surrounding winds and rain even when its eye remains offshore.
The destructive sequence had begun months earlier: Nasa’s assessment of the Pacific storm season traces elevated activity back to April, when Super Typhoon Sinlaku battered Micronesia, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. In-fa subsequently became the fifth typhoon to affect the Mariana Islands this year, leaving the region repeatedly exposed to severe weather.
How El Nino changes the storm threat
El Nino is a recurring change in the tropical Pacific’s ocean and atmospheric circulation, characterized by unusually warm surface waters in its central and eastern reaches. As the prevailing trade winds weaken, the distribution of warm water and tropical rainfall shifts eastwards, altering weather patterns far beyond the equator.
For the western North Pacific, a crucial consequence is that tropical cyclones can form farther east and spend longer travelling over warm water before approaching land. Research also links El Nino conditions to longer storm lifetimes and a greater tendency for tracks to curve northwards, changing which coastlines and island chains face the greatest exposure.
That helps explain why the phenomenon cannot be reduced to a simple prediction of more storms everywhere. Its influence on where storms develop, how long they remain over the ocean and which direction they travel can be as consequential as the total number that forms.
Nor does an exceptionally strong El Nino guarantee equally extreme conditions in every affected country. The World Meteorological Organization cautions that the strength of the event does not translate directly into the severity of its regional impacts, making local forecasts essential to understanding the actual threat.
Warming adds another layer of risk
El Nino’s natural cycle is unfolding against the longer-term warming caused by human activity. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s assessment of tropical cyclones and climate change projects heavier cyclone rainfall, stronger average storm intensity and a larger proportion of the most intense storms as global temperatures rise.
Those findings do not mean that climate change necessarily produces more tropical cyclones overall, or that every individual typhoon can be attributed to it. Most modelling studies project a decline or little change in total global cyclone numbers, even as rainfall and the destructive potential of powerful storms increase.
Rising sea levels compound the coastal threat by allowing storm-driven water to reach higher levels than it otherwise would. The practical risk therefore extends beyond wind speed to include heavier rainfall and coastal inundation, both of which can inflict severe damage outside a cyclone’s most intense core.
Drought and typhoons can arrive in the same season
The Philippines illustrates the apparently contradictory pressures created by El Nino as forecasters expect unusually dry conditions across much of the country while continuing to warn of destructive cyclones. Pagasa’s November outlook, reported by GMA News, anticipates one or two tropical cyclones entering or developing within its monitoring area during the month.
At the same time, the agency expects below-normal to well-below-normal rainfall across most of the country in November, followed by similarly dry conditions nationwide during December and January. A seasonal rainfall deficit does not rule out a brief, destructive episode of torrential rain, leaving authorities to manage water shortages and storm preparedness together.
The Pacific’s storms can also remain consequential after leaving tropical waters. Nasa reported that Champi’s remnants became entangled with a weather system approaching Alaska, where the transition expanded the area affected by strong winds and brought rain and snow to parts of the state.
The broader climate outlook offers little prospect of an immediate return to neutral conditions. In its October 8 assessment, the US Climate Prediction Center put the probability of strong-to-very-strong El Nino conditions continuing through January–March 2027 above 83 per cent, while stressing that associated regional weather impacts remain probabilities rather than certainties.