Wednesday, March 18, 2009

New typhoon categorisation to start

News from the Hong Kong government: New typhoon categorisation will be introduced this year to enhance people's alertness to stronger typhoons, Hong Kong Observatory Director Lam Chiu-ying says. Mr Lam today said 'typhoon' will be further categorised into 'typhoon', 'severe typhoon' and 'super typhoon'. He predicted the number of tropical cyclones affecting Hong Kong this year will be near normal - five or six - while annual rainfall will be below norma

On climate change the observatory has reassessed the trend of rainfall in Hong Kong in the 21st Century based on the latest data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment Report published in 2007. "We forecast rainfall in Hong Kong will rise in the latter half of this century. The number of extremely wet years and extremely dry years will also increase," Mr Lam said. On the observatory's work in 2009 he said it has reviewed its operations during the typhoon season last year and concluded it should improve the delivery of storm surge information....

The shore of Mahajanga, the morning after tropical cyclone Gafilo. Image by WITTus (Sascha Wittkowski), Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

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