Super Typhoon Choi-wan Hits 160 mph

Published September 16, 2009 @ 07:53PM PT

Photo from space of Super Typhoon Choi-wan, Sept. 15, 2009
Above: Super Typhoon Choi-wan on Sept. 15, 2009. Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.

Terrible beauty: Super Typhoon Choi-wan is currently the strongest storm on the planet. The monster storm is sweeping westward across the Pacific with sustained winds of 160 miles per hour (with gusts up to 315 mph) toward Japanese islands to Tokyo's south.

It's not aiming for any major population centers, but is still remarkable for being over 1,000 miles wide, and the strongest of this year's Pacific typhoon season.

A team from Japan's Nagoya University and the country's Meteorological Research Institute say that even fiercer superstorms become more and more likely after 2050, if we don't curb global warming.

If the Earth's ocean surfaces warm by about 3 deg. C from pre-industrial levels over the next century (a scenario explored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a super typhoon stronger than Hurricane Katrina could hit Japan some time after 2050, these researchers announced last week. Such extreme superstorms could blow at sustained ground winds of 180 mph.

The world's major industrial nations have jointly agreed to keep the Earth's warming below 2 deg. C. by the end of the century...but have yet to make clear exactly what steps they'll take to make sure of that. And in any case, most climate experts have said they have no faith that the political efforts being made at the moment can possibly hold warming back from less than a disastrous 4-5 deg. C by century's end.

(August's sea surface temperatures were the warmest in at least 160 years.)

What's it going to take to change this probable future into a disaster averted?

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