Does warmer China land attract more super typhoons?

Accurate prediction of where and when typhoons (or named hurricanes which form over the North Atlantic Ocean) will make landfall is critical to protecting human lives and properties. Although the traditional method of typhoon track prediction based on the steering flow theory has been proven to be an effective way in most situations, it slipped up in some cases. Our analysis of the long-term Chinese typhoon records reveals that typhoons, especially super typhoons (those with maximum sustained surface winds of greater than 51 ms(−1)), have a trend to make landfalls toward warmer land in China over the past 50 years (1960–2009). Numerical sensitivity experiments using an advanced atmospheric model further confirm this finding. Our finding suggests an alternative approach to predict the landfall tracks of the most devastating typhoons in the southeastern China.