Western Pacific Typhoon Trends

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By Paul Homewood

For natural reasons, most attention is focussed on Atlantic hurricanes rather than elsewhere.

The Japan Meteorological Agency handily publishes data on the annual count of tropical cyclones reaching at least tropical storm frequency in the western Pacific:

https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/jma-center/rsmc-hp-pub-eg/climatology.html

Whatever trend there is appears to be downwards.

The JMA don’t give the split between storms and typhoons, but we can get this from Wikipedia:

The number of cyclones reaching typhoon strength, 74 mph, shows a clear decline.

The trend is less clear for super typhoons, effectively Cat 4 and 5s on the Saffir Simpson scale. There was a sharp drop off in the 1970s and 80s. Since then numbers have reverted to pre-1970 levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_typhoon_season

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

JANUARY 5, 2022