Super Typhoons and the Human Cost of Climate Change in the Philippines

The Philippines is facing stronger and more frequent typhoons, driven by warming oceans, making this the country’s most urgent climate challenge. These intensified storms not only destroy homes and communities but also tear families apart—forcing millions to evacuate, rebuild, or even relocate entirely. The effects are deeply personal: parents struggle to keep their children safe, provide food, and find secure shelter, while livelihoods are often wiped out in an instant. The economic impact is immense, with projections suggesting the country could lose over 13% of its economy by 2040. These storms also worsen food shortages, spread diseases like dengue and cholera, and threaten the safety of millions, especially those living in coastal areas. The growing intensity of typhoons highlights how climate change is making life increasingly difficult for Filipino families each year.

Philippines Climate Risk Profile

Urban Climate

A recent journal article by MZ Jacobson et al points out some of the climatological impacts of urbanization on local climate. The land use change that urbanization leads to is known to impact climatological conditions through changes in soil moisture evaporation, transpiration (evaporation from plants), heat absorption and advection (wind).

In this article the authors used models to study the impact of the change in urban extent in Beijing. Beijing provides a good case due to the extreme nature of changes there - the urban extent of the city quadrupled between 2000 and 2009.

Key Points from the article:

• Beijing's expansion created a ring of impact in the new portion of the city
• Without considering the impact of more vehicles and other sources of human caused polution - urbanization's impact on climatological conditions alone slowed winds and increased pollution vertical dilution and increased ground level temperature, and ozone

Interestingly the authors used crowdsourced data on road surface area in their study.

Take homes:
This study found that urbanization changes local climate in these ways - it:

• increases ground level temperature
• decreases ground level humidity
• decreases horizontal movement of air (wind, advection)
• increases vertical movement of air (convection)
• reduces reflectivity of the surface (albedo) causing the retention of more solar energy

These impacts:

• decreased surface pollution by promoting vertical mixing
• but increased surface ozone (O3) due to other changes in the chemical profile of the air

None of these impacts takes into account vehicle use or other pollution sources.

Ring of impact from the mega-urbanization of Beijing between 2000 and 2009 (pages 5740–5756) Mark Z. Jacobson, Son V. Nghiem, Alessandro Sorichetta and Natasha Whitney Article first published online: 19 JUN 2015 | DOI: 10.1002/2014JD023008