Fewer, but More Intense, Future Tropical Storms Over the Ganges and Mekong Basins

Haider Ali, Hayley J. Fowler, Benoit Vanniere, Malcolm J. Roberts

Published in ‘Geophysical Research Letters’

Plain Language Summary

Tropical Storms (TS) are one of the world's most damaging natural hazards which result in colossal socio-economic losses to life, infrastructure, and property, especially in low-lying delta rivers basins like the Ganges and Mekong. Knowledge of changes to TS activity under climate change can therefore be helpful in better disaster risk mitigation and climate adaptation. Previous modeling studies have used coarse-resolution global climate models unable to capture key TS characteristics. In this study, we utilized finer resolution (up to ∼25 km at six hourly time-steps) CMIP6 HighResMIP models and two different tracking algorithms (trackers) to resolve a part of this uncertainty. Our results project a decline to the frequency of future TS but an increase in the strength of TS (in terms of intensity and Available Cyclone Energy, qualitatively similar for both trackers). These findings can be used to assess the future resilience of existing infrastructure systems to Tropical Storms across these densely populated basins.