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Four major Islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku) in Japan (shaded in black). Also shown are CMOJ weather stations in 1882 (red dots) and locations of Yokohama (skyblue star), Hakodate, Tokyo, Simonoseki, and Kagoshima
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Tropical cyclone (TC) activities over the western North Pacific (WNP) and TC landfall in Japan are investigated by collecting historical TC track data and meteorological observation data starting from the mid-nineteenth century. Historical TC track data and TC best track data are merged over the WNP from 1884 to 2018. The quality of historical TC d...
Citations
... We analyzed the JMA best track datasets (JMA 2021b) for selected TCs (n = 84) that included TC central positions, intensities (V max ), sizes (R 50 and R 30 ), and translation speeds. Reconstructed typhoon data for Japan (Kubota et al 2021) was used to collect local maximum wind speed recorded at the nearest weather station or lighthouse during the passage of a TC. It needs to be noted that stations used for recording local maximum wind speed are different from tidal stations used for recording surge levels. ...
... It needs to be noted that stations used for recording local maximum wind speed are different from tidal stations used for recording surge levels. Thus, we refer to Kubota et al (2021) for full details on the selection of weather stations used for recording local wind speed. Although we analyzed TC meteorological information available from genesis to death, we specifically compared TC meteorological conditions during the landfall time frame with peak surge records. ...
... One remarkable feature is that the occurrence frequency of landfalling TC in R1 (nationwide) during P1 and P2 are 0.65 (1.85) and 1.15 (2.35) per year, respectively. It corroborates the findings of Kubota et al (2021), who detected a significant northeastward shift of TC landfall locations in Japan from 1977-2019. In contrast, TC occurrence frequency has remained almost stationary in R3. ...
Variability in storminess, storm surge, and mean sea level (MSL) can substantially alter coastal hazards associated with extreme sea levels (ESL). However, the detection and attribution of the past changes in tropical cyclone (TC) activity and associated storm surges are hampered by the inhomogeneous TC records. In this study, we investigate spatiotemporal changes in storm surge levels in Japan from 1980–2019, a period when observational platforms including tide gauges and storm records are highly consistent. We find statistical evidence supporting the increase in surge annual maxima in several places including the bay area of Tokyo since 1980. This rate of change is comparable to that observed for MSL rise over the same period. These findings cast doubt on the current hypothesis underlying the flood adaptation plan, which assumes that future surge extremes will remain the same and only considers MSL changes. We demonstrate that the changes in ESL in the last 40 years cannot be explained by the rise of MSL alone. Rather, the northeastward shifting of TC landfall location along with intensifying and widening of TCs, might have altered the likelihood of ESL, including surge extremes. The substantial influence of these TC meteorological variables on surge levels combined with the rise of MSL, suggests that current coastal planning practices including critical heights for flood defenses might be inadequate in the future.
... Two strong tropical cyclones that hit the Japanese coasts were documented, one in 1853 mainly affecting the central Ryukyus, and one in 1863 extending from Miyako to the northern Ryukyus (Kubota et al., 2021). The 1863 typhoon could have impacted the microatolls but the sea-level drop would have been sudden (Weil-Accardo, Feuillet, Jacques, Deschamps, Saurel, et al., 2016; Figure 8) and it is not what we observed in any of the events 1 to 11 except event 6 in Irabu (19 cm in one year in 1946 ± 2). ...
The seismic hazard related to megathrust earthquakes in the Ryukyus (southern Japan) is poorly constrained as no large earthquake has been reported there. The Meiwa tsunami impacted the coasts of the Yaeyama and Miyako islands in 1771 but its origin is still debated. Global Navigation Satellite Systems measurements indicate that strain is accumulating along the plate interface but the observation period is short. It is thus crucial to gain information on the seismic potential of the megathrust. The islands of the Ryukyu archipelago are located in a tropical region and surrounded by reefs where numerous microatolls are growing. They preserved the record of variations of the relative sea‐level in their skeleton. We mapped seven sites over five islands and subsequently selected and sampled eight slabs of modern microatolls. The corals have emerged slowly at a rate of 0.7–2.8 mm/yr due to the long‐term interseismic loading on the megathrust up to 40 km in deep. The coupling rate estimated from elastic back‐slip models ranges between 10% and 100%. We also identified multi‐decadal relative sea‐level changes of a few cm/yr, likely due to very long duration slow‐slip events (SSE) along the shallow or deep parts of the megathrust. Those SSEs occur each 10–40 years and have accommodated 50% of the convergence rate in the last 250 years. Our study provides new constraints on the seismic cycle of the Ryukyu megathrust and on the seismic hazard in this region and suggests that a large megathrust earthquake could occur in the area in the future.
... Also, other factors such as ENSO, weather systems, water vapor transport, and urbanization, all have effects (to varying degrees) on LTCER [17,[71][72][73][74]. Moreover, some recent studies have extended the time series of TCs to the late 19th century in East Asia [75,76], and these new findings can be combined with historical precipitation data to further study the changes in LTCER at the centennial scale. In addition, past observations show that the LTCER over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin has increased; plus, the future change in the flood risk caused by LTCER in this region is also worthy of further discussion. ...
Landfalling tropical cyclones (LTCs) is one of the most serious meteorological disasters in China due to the provided severe wind and heavy rainfall. Tropical cyclone–induced rainfall in China has been proved to decrease in recent decades. However, how landfalling tropical cyclone–induced extreme rainfall (LTCER) has changed across China, as well as the relationship between LTCER and LTCs remains poorly understood. Accordingly, the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics and long-term changes of LTCER over mainland China during the past 60 years were investigated, by using an Objective Synoptic Analysis Technique to identify LTCER. Mid and high latitudes are exposed to a greater risk of extreme rainfall from northward-moving landfalling tropical cyclones (LTCs). Meanwhile, LTCER tends to increase from 1960 to 2019 across mainland China (characterized by a decrease from 1960 to 1989 and an increase from 1990 to 2019). The LTCER trend exhibits a large spatial difference, with an increase near and to the north of 30°N, but no significant change to the south of 30°N. Moreover, the central latitude of the LTCER zone to the north of 30°N has shifted significantly southwards, while that to the south of 30°N has shifted north. Further analysis revealed that the average latitude of the LTC intensity centers to the north/south of 30°N exhibits the same shift to that of LTCER, indicating that the shift of LTCER has mainly been imposed by the migration of LTCs.
... Besides the northeastward shift of peak surge location, there is evidence that TCs occurrence probability along the Pacific coast of the eastern (R1) and western (R2) Japan has increased substantially during P2 than in P1 (Fig. 2a). It corroborates the findings of Kubota et al. (31), who detected a significant northeastward shift of TC landfall location in Japan during 1977-2019. In contrast, TC occurrence frequency has remained almost stationary in R3. ...
... We analyzed JMA best track datasets (40) for selected TCs (n =84) that include TC central positions, intensities (Vmax), sizes (R50 and R30), and translation speeds. Reconstructed typhoon data for Japan (31) was used to collect local maximum wind speed recorded at the nearest weather station or lighthouse during the passage of a TC. It needs to be noted that stations used for recording local maximum wind speed are different from tidal stations used for recording surge levels and thus, we defer to Kubota et al. (31) for full details on the selection of weather stations used for recording local wind speed. ...
Variability in storminess, storm surge, and mean sea level (MSL) can substantially alter coastal hazards associated with extreme sea levels (ESL). However, detection and attribution of past changes in tropical cyclone (TC) and related storm surge activity are hampered by inhomogeneous TC records due to changes in observational capabilities. Here we investigate spatiotemporal changes in storm surge levels in Japan from 1980–2019, a period when observational platforms including tide gauges and storm records are highly consistent. The analyses illustrate statistical evidence of increasing surge annual maxima in several places including the bay area of Tokyo since 1980 and this rate of change is comparable to those observed for MSL rise over the same period. These findings contrast the current hypothesis on the flood adaptation plan in which future surge extremes will remain the same. We demonstrate that the change in surge annual maxima reflects the combined effect of a consistent northeastward shifting of TC landfall location, intensifying and widening of TC. The substantial influence of these TC meteorological variables on surge levels coupled with MSL rise over long periods suggests that current coastal planning practices including critical heights for flood defenses, might be inadequate in the future.
... The hit rate between the 20CR and IBTrACS TCs for the period 1989-2013 is ~87%. We have also implemented further assessment of our 20CR-derived TC records for the western North Pacific by comparing the meridional oscillation of TCs over Japan and the South China Sea regions with results from two previous studies for the basin 62,63 . After analysing data from 1910 to 2019, Liu et al. showed that for the two periods, 1943-1963 and 1997-2019, the annual number of TCs near Japan are higher than those over the South China Sea, while for the other two periods, 1926-1942 and 1969-1988, the opposite pattern occurs. ...
Assessing the role of anthropogenic warming from temporally inhomogeneous historical data in the presence of large natural variability is difficult and has caused conflicting conclusions on detection and attribution of tropical cyclone (TC) trends. Here, using a reconstructed long-term proxy of annual TC numbers together with high-resolution climate model experiments, we show robust declining trends in the annual number of TCs at global and regional scales during the twentieth century. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) dataset is used for reconstruction because, compared with other reanalyses, it assimilates only sea-level pressure fields rather than utilize all available observations in the troposphere, making it less sensitive to temporal inhomogeneities in the observations. It can also capture TC signatures from the pre-satellite era reasonably well. The declining trends found are consistent with the twentieth century weakening of the Hadley and Walker circulations, which make conditions for TC formation less favourable.
... There is a long observational record of TCs making landfall in Japan, and a potential to construct a landfalling TC time series of the past 100 years and more in the mid-to high latitude of the western North Pacific. Kubota et al. (2021) reported a long-term TC data series from 1877 to 2019, which was obtained by combining the TC track data and the early observational data from weather stations and lighthouses. The lower number of annual landfalling TCs in Japan during the period from the 1970s to the 2000s as shown in this paper (Fig. 4c) is similar to that in China mainland (Ren et al. 2002;Ding and Ren 2008). ...
This is an extended editors’ commentary on the topical collection “Historical and recent change in extreme climate over East Asia”, which collects a total of 15 papers related to the change and variability of extreme climate events in East Asia over the last few hundreds years. The extreme climate events are broadly classified into three categories: temperature and extreme warmth/coldness, precipitation and floods/droughts and western North Pacific typhoons. This commentary briefly summarizes the main findings presented in each paper in this topical collection, and outlines the implications of these findings for monitoring, detecting and modeling of regional climate change and for studying climate change impacts and adaptability. It also assesses the uncertainties of these studies, as well as the remaining knowledge gaps that should be filled in the future. One solid conclusion we can draw from these studies is that there was a marked decadal to multi-decadal variability of extreme climate events in East Asia in recent history, and the extreme events as observed during the last decades of the instrumental era were still within the range of natural variability except for some of those related to temperature. More severe and enduring droughts occurred in the early 20 th century or the earlier periods of history, frequently leading to great famines in northern China. Uncertainties remain in reconstructing historical extreme climate events and analyzing the early instrumental records. Further research could focus on the improvement of methodology in proxy based reconstruction of multi-decadal variations of surface air temperature and precipitation/drought, the recovery, digitization, calibration and verification of the early instrumental records, and the mechanisms of the observed multi-decadal variability of extreme climate in the region.
A historical atmospheric reanalysis from 1850 to 2015 was performed using an atmospheric general circulation model assimilating surface pressure observations archived in international databases, with perturbed observational sea surface temperatures as a lower boundary condition. Posterior spread during data assimilation provides quantitative information on the uncertainty in the historical reanalysis. The reanalysis reproduces the evolution of the three-dimensional atmosphere close to those of the operational centers. Newly archived surface pressure observations greatly reduced the uncertainties in the present reanalysis over East Asia in the early 20th century. A scheme for assimilating tropical cyclone tracks and intensities was developed. The scheme was superior to the present several reanalyses in reproducing the intensity close to the observations and the positions. The reanalysis provides possible images of atmospheric circulations before reanalyses with full-scale observations become available, and opportunities for investigating extreme events that occurred before World War II. Incorporating dynamical downscaling with a regional model that includes detailed topography and sophisticated physics is an application of historical reanalysis to reveal the details of past extreme events. Some examples of past heavy rainfall events in Japan are shown using a downscaling experiment, together with dense rainfall observations over the Japanese islands.
European and US ships sailed in the vicinity of Japanese waters before the weather station network was established in Japan during the late Edo period in the 18th and 19th centuries. We focused on the ship log weather records on vessels sailing through Japanese waters during this period. The 18th-century weather records came mostly from expedition cruises in the vicinity of Japan. In the 19th century, weather records were found from US Navy and other ships that came to Japan to open the country to the wider world. We briefly introduce these old meteorological data based on the foreign ship logs in the vicinity of Japan and focus on three tropical cyclone (TC) events during the period from July 21 to 25, 1853 observed on six ships of Perry’s fleet by US Naval Japan Expedition, on September 23 and 24, 1856 observed by the Medusa of the Dutch Navy, and on August 15 and 16, 1863 during the bombardment of Kagoshima in southern Japan observed by 11 UK Navy ships. Tracks of TCs are analyzed based on those ship log weather records.
This chapter presents case studies of climate reconstructions for historical periods based on the climate information from pre-nineteenth century data and the documents described in the previous chapter. The first part presents examples of studies that reconstruct typhoon tracks and intensity from early meteorological observation records and diary weather records. The second part presents studies that reconstruct summer and winter temperature fluctuations mainly from diary weather records. Finally, unique climate reconstructions from full-flowering date record for cherry trees in Kyoto over the past 1200 years and pollen analysis in the highland moors in central Japan over the past 6000 years are demonstrated,KeywordsClimate reconstructionTyphoon tracks and intensityMeteorological disasterGreat faminesFull-flowering date records
