Escalating typhoon risks in Shanghai amid shifting tracks driven by urbanization and sea surface temperature warming

Zhuang, Qi; Koukoula, Marika; Liu, Shuguang; Zhou, Zhengzheng; Peleg, Nadav

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-1267-2025

Articles | Volume 6, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-1267-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-1267-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 4

Research article

|

29 Oct 2025

Research article |

| 29 Oct 2025

Escalating typhoon risks in Shanghai amid shifting tracks driven by urbanization and sea surface temperature warming

Qi Zhuang, Marika Koukoula, Shuguang Liu, Zhengzheng Zhou, and Nadav Peleg

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-1267-2025-supplement

Data sets

NCEP GFS 0.25 Degree Global Forecast Grids Historical Archive, updated daily DOC/NOAA/NWS/NCEP https://doi.org/10.5065/D65D8PWK

GHRSST Level 4 AVHRR_OI Global Blended Sea Surface Temperature Analysis (GDS2) from NCEI (AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.1) NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information https://doi.org/10.5067/GHAAO-4BC21

Video supplement

Numerical experiment in Shanghai: Variability of typhoon Rumbia (2018) with SST increase Qi Zhuang et al. https://doi.org/10.5446/68890

Short summary

Understanding how projected urbanization and climate change affect typhoons, which may cause the most destructive natural catastrophes, is crucial. Based on numerical simulations of five landfalling typhoons in Shanghai, China, our results highlight that warming sea surface temperatures significantly shift typhoon tracks with intensified structures (increased size, intensity, and affected time) on the big scale. Meanwhile, urbanization further amplifies local rainfall intensity.