A novel framework to assess climate change impacts on typhoon-induced urban wind fields using pseudo-global warming simulations: A case study of Typhoon Mangkhut

As climate change intensifies, tropical cyclones (TCs) pose increasing threats to coastal urban areas. This study introduces a novel framework that integrates pseudo-global warming (PGW) technology with regional meteorological models to assess future changes in the climatology exposure of TCs focusing on urban wind fields. Utilizing sea surface temperatures derived from 28 global climate models as the primary climate indicator, this research simulates wind intensity changes of TCs under the latest climate scenarios—namely, shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) 1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5—over the period from 2021 to 2080. The 2018 Typhoon Mangkhut serves as the base condition for conducting the PGW variations. The results project increases in maximum wind speeds before landfalling by 13.20% under SSP1-2.6, 25.51% under SSP2-4.5, and 36.99% under SSP5-8.5, compared to the historical climate conditions from 1961 to 2020. For the urban wind field, the integration of high-resolution terrain and land-use datasets, along with urban canopy models, significantly enhances the accuracy of the simulations. This accuracy improvement is validated through wind speed recordings from four meteorological stations in Hong Kong, demonstrating the significant influence of urban heterogeneity on wind field estimation. Additionally, this study highlights a general increase trend in the vertical wind profiles of TCs in Hong Kong with climate change. The enhanced structural integrity of TCs in warm climates, characterized by notable increases in wind speeds around the typhoon eye, significantly intensifies their destructive potential.