By YASUKAZU AKADA/ Staff Writer
August 26, 2024 at 18:29 JST
Kosuke Ito, associate professor at Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute (Provided by Kosuke Ito)
A strong cold low-pressure system has apparently brought the projected path of powerful Typhoon No. 10 more to the west than originally forecast, according to an expert.
While several factors may have been at play, the main reason appears to be a cold vortex that is blowing counterclockwise on the west side of the typhoon, said Kosuke Ito, associate professor at Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute.
“We have found that the cold vortex has strong momentum and carried the typhoon westward as if throwing the storm over its shoulder,” said Ito, who specializes in meteorology..
Ito said a cold vortex, also known as a cold-core low, occurs at a high altitude of about 10 kilometers and there are many points that have not been clarified.
“To begin with, it is more difficult to observe weather at sea than weather on land,” he said. “It is still difficult to predict the path of typhoons that pass over the ocean because the data is largely limited to those observed by meteorological satellites.”
Masanori Ebi, chief forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Osaka Regional Headquarters, said, “We were aware of the cold vortex from the early stages of our forecast, but we did not think it was strong enough to affect the path of the typhoon to this extent.”
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