Typhoon Ragasa slammed Taiwan, the Philippines and southern China, leaving flooding and destruction. Here's why the strongest storm of the year bears the fingerprint of climate change.

Central

Typhoon Ragasa became the strongest storm on Earth this year after undergoing rapid intensification, a process where a storm’s wind speeds increase dramatically in less than 24 hours. Ragasa’s winds doubled the threshold for rapid intensification, reaching sustained speeds of 205 km per hour and gusts up to 270 km per hour, equivalent to a Category 5 super typhoon.

The storm’s explosive growth was driven by record warm ocean waters and an eyewall replacement cycle, both of which contributed to its power. Rapid intensification events are becoming more frequent globally as ocean temperatures rise, making such storms harder to forecast. Ragasa caused significant damage in the Philippines, Taiwan, and southern China, with residents having little time to prepare.

How Ragasa became Earth’s strongest storm in hours

How did Typhoon Ragasa explode into the strongest storm on earth this year in just a single day? The culprit is called rapid intensification, a meteorological term for when a storm grows very quickly in less than 24 hours. How quickly? Well, there isn't a global standard, but the National Hurricane Centre defines it as when winds increase more than 55 km per hour in a day. Ragasa didn't just meet that threshold, it doubled it. Sustained winds at its peak were 205 km per hour, with gusts to 270, equivalent to a Cat 5 super typhoon. That explosion is fuelled by record warm ocean waters, which stores extra energy and releases it as latent heat into the storm. Another process unique to strong cyclones was at play too. A ring of thunderstorms formed around the eyewall, stealing its energy, eventually replacing it. This eyewall replacement cycle often sets the stage for an even stronger storm. Rapid intensification is becoming more common with warmer waters, and they are notoriously hard to forecast. Rapid intensification is often cited as a key source of errors in hurricane and typhoon tracking. And for context, hurricanes and typhoons are the same type of storm, just differently named depending on where they're from. So around 20-30% of all tropical cyclones experience at least one period of rapid intensification. But globally, that frequency has increased over the last four decades, and scientists are linking that to a warming world. Ragasa first hit Luzon in the Philippines. Then in Taiwan, it knocked out power for hundreds of thousands, triggering landslides and mass evacuations, before a final deadly landfall in southern China. Residents had barely any time to prepare as the storm went from dangerous to devastating in just hours.

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