Scientists map economic sector loss from influential tropical cyclones in China

A recent study by a group of Chinese scientists has map the economic sector loss brought by influential tropical cyclones (ITCs) in China in the last three decades.

The study, after calculation and analysis on multiple reference databases and socio-economic data, revealed ITCs loss for major economic sectors such as agriculture, industry, construction, transport, and business & others.

Industrial sector was proved to be the biggest victim of ITCs, accounting for 37 percent of the total ITCs loss, according to the study.

“High values were primarily distributed in the urban agglomerations of the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas and along the southeastern coast, with over 1 billion CNY per year,” said SU Buda, researcher from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the study.

A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain. In China, ITCs are defined as those that cause significant national economic loss.

The industrial sector has the highest growth rate of loss from ITCs, while the construction sector shows the lowest. There is a rising tendency for ITCs loss in all economic sectors except agriculture, according to the study.

The ITCs track is migrating northward, causing increasing severe loss to all economic sectors in northern China, SU noted.

Rainfall was proved to be more positively correlated with loss from tropical cyclones than wind speed, and the industrial sector shows the largest correlation, the study also showed.

Results of the study were published on recent issue of Global and Planetary Change, entitled “Economic sector loss from influential tropical cyclones and relationship to associated rainfall and wind speed in China”.