Enhancement of Extremely Heavy Precipitation Induced by Typhoon Hagibis (2019) due to Historical Warming

Impacts of historical warming on extremely heavy rainfall induced by Typhoon Hagibis (2019) are investigated using a storyline event attribution approach with the Japan Meteorological Agency Nonhydrostatic Model (JMA-NHM). Control experiments based on JMA mesoscale analysis data well reproduce the typhoon's track, intensity, and heavy precipitation. First, two non-warming experiments are conducted: One excludes both 40-year atmospheric and oceanic temperature trends from 1980 to 2019, and the other excludes the oceanic trend only. A comparison between control and non-warming experiments indicates that historical warming strengthens typhoons and increases the amount of total precipitation by 10.9% over central Japan. The difference between CTL and non-warming experiments without both atmospheric and oceanic temperature trends is larger than that without just the oceanic trend (7.3%). Additional sensitivity experiments without Japan's topography indicate that topography enhances not only total precipitation but also the changes in total precipitation due to historical warming. Through the storyline event attribution approach, it is concluded that historical warming intensifies strength of Typhoon Hagibis (2019) and enhances the extremely heavy precipitation induced by the typhoon.

Automated summary

The study found that historical warming intensified the strength of Typhoon Hagibis (2019) and increased total precipitation over central Japan by 10.9%. Moreover, experiments excluding both atmospheric and oceanic temperature trends showed a larger difference compared to experiments excluding only oceanic trends.