October 31, 2018
Keio University
A research team from Keio University, including Full-time Lecturer Yoshiaki Miyamoto of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies and Associate Professor Norihiko Sugimoto of the Faculty of Law, has successfully unraveled the mechanism behind the rapid structural changes in typhoons—a long-standing mystery—by developing a new theory based on the fundamental principles of meteorology.
Developed typhoons have a cloud-free "eye" at their center, surrounded by a ring-shaped cloud known as the "eyewall." In intense typhoons, another ring-shaped cloud, an "outer eyewall," can form. The formation of this outer eyewall causes rapid changes in the typhoon's structure and dramatic shifts in its intensity, making intensity forecasting extremely difficult. However, its formation mechanism has been considered one of the greatest mysteries in typhoon research and had remained unsolved despite recent global research efforts. This study has successfully developed a new theory that explains this formation mechanism from a completely new perspective, based on fundamental meteorological theories found even in textbooks. These findings have the potential to dramatically improve the accuracy of typhoon intensity forecasts.
The findings of this study have been published in the online edition of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, a scientific journal published by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
Please see below for the full press release.