J. Albert Gamboa l June 22, 2023 l Manila Bulletin
KYOTO, Japan – This ancient city is part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area in the Kansai region of southern Honshu Island along with the cities of Kobe and Osaka. It is also the capital and largest city of Kyoto Prefecture, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations with more than 20% of its land area designated as natural parks.
For more than a thousand years, Kyoto served as Japan’ second permanent capital from 794 to 1869. Emperor Kanmu chose to relocate the imperial court to Heian-kyo, Kyoto’s original name, from the previous capital in nearby Nara Prefecture. Japanese monarchs ruled from Kyoto for almost 11 centuries until Emperor Meiji relocated the capital to Edo, which he renamed into Tokyo.
In modern times, the city is known as the signing venue of the landmark Kyoto Protocol – the first international treaty to set legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Adopted in December 1997 and subsequently ratified by 192 parties (including the Philippines), the Kyoto Protocol recently marked its 25th anniversary. It remains a historic document in the global fight against climate change, even though the Paris Agreement has superseded it since December 2015.
As one of the most disaster-prone countries in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan has been visited by an average of 25.1 typhoons per year over the past 30 years. Most of them approach the archipelago in August or September, according to a report in the Japan Times.
But people here are wondering why the typhoon season started relatively early this year when Super Typhoon Mawar slammed Guam before turning into an “extratropical cyclone” that hit Japan two weeks ago. In fact, Mawar produced heavy rains that lashed wide areas of central Honshu and caused massive flooding as well as the suspension of airline and railway services, including the bullet trains plying the Tokyo-Nagoya-Kyoto-Osaka route.
The Japan Meteorological Agency announced last week that the El Niño phenomenon is “seen to be occurring” this summer and there’s a 90% chance it will continue up to autumn. El Niño happens once every few years when there is a rise in sea surface temperatures around the equator, particularly the southeastern portion of the Pacific Ocean.
Tomoe Nasuno, a senior researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, said: “It’s been known that when the El Niño effect becomes strong, we see the occurrence of strong typhoons. That’s why we expect to see a large number of stronger typhoons this year.” Thus, weather agencies predict that around 29 to 30 typhoons will develop in 2023, more than the average number between 1992 and 2022.
Another climate factor called the “positive phase of the Indian Ocean dipole” also occurs every so often toward the end of the year. Such an event happens when sea surface temperatures become warmer than normal in the western part of the tropical Indian Ocean, causing convective activity to shift westward.
Kosuke Ito, associate professor of meteorology at Kyoto University, warned that the combination of El Niño and the positive Indian Ocean dipole could trigger more cyclones. He explained that the larger-than-usual number of typhoons this year does not necessarily mean more of them would make a landfall in Japan.
But over the long term, global warming is expected to make the impact of typhoons more severe, especially in the Western Pacific where the Philippines and Japan are located. Both Ito and Nasuno are of the opinion that people in our region should therefore not let their guard down due to the possibility of more typhoons packing extremely strong winds or unprecedented volumes of rain in the coming years.
*** J. Albert Gamboa is a Life Member of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) and Vice-Chair of the FINEX Ethics Committee. The opinion expressed herein does not necessarily reflect the views of these institutions and the Manila Bulletin. #FinexPhils www.finex.org.ph