The typhoons slamming Asia are getting much stronger

WASHINGTON — Typhoons that slam into land in the northwestern Pacific - especially the biggest tropical cyclones of the bunch - have gotten considerably stronger since the 1970s.

That’s according to a study Monday in the Nature Geoscience journal.

The study’s lead author is Wei Mei, a climate scientist at the University of North Carolina. Mei connects the strengthening of these storms to warmer seawater near the coasts. That provides more fuel for typhoons.

Mei and two other outside scientists say it is too early to say precisely that the increased intensity is from man-made climate change.

But Mei says as the world warms more in the future, stronger storms are likely to get even more intense, especially north of 10 degrees north latitude, where China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan are located.