Hong Kong’s exceptionally warm October weather is being driven by a combination of a super typhoon, El Nino and global warming, a climate expert has said, warning that higher-than-usual temperatures are likely to persist through the winter.
The warning came as autumn temperatures across the city topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) over the past few weeks.
Professor Amos Tai Pui-kuen, of the earth and environmental sciences department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, explained on Wednesday that El Nino had altered typhoon paths and weakened the northeasterly winds that typically reach the city in autumn.
“A ‘super’ El Nino means that courses of typhoons would move more northerly … if and when typhoons do hit Hong Kong, because of the high sea level temperatures, there will be more heat and steam evaporating, which contributes to a stronger typhoon, too,” he said.