East Asia is reeling from a series of exceptionally powerful and erratic storms, supercharged by the El Niño climate pattern, which have claimed dozens of lives, disrupted major airports, and devastated crops and infrastructure across the region.

A Season of Extremes

For coastal communities in the Philippines, Taiwan, China, and Japan, wild weather is a familiar foe. But the past few months have been extraordinary by any measure. In October, Taiwan braced for Typhoon Champi, a category five-equivalent monster with winds of 295km/h (193mph). Although the storm skirted the island, its sheer size prompted a near-total shutdown, and its outer bands still caused hundreds of flight cancellations in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. In the Philippines' Batanes archipelago, massive waves forced the closure of seaside highways, while in southern Japan's Okinawa islands, power was cut to 15,000 homes.

El Niño's Grip

El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years, is characterized by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific and shifts in wind patterns. This year's event, forecast by the UK Met Office to be the strongest in living memory, is expected to persist until February or March. Its impact has been unmistakable: in June, Japan faced two simultaneous storms, Typhoon Mekkhala and Severe Tropical Storm Higos, forcing one million people to evacuate. July saw Tropical Storm Narra submerge villages in southern China's Guangxi region, displacing tens of thousands. August brought Super Typhoon Dolphin, which churned across the Pacific for 16 days before slamming into eastern China, triggering floods and casualties. Later that month, Typhoon Saudel made landfall in three south-eastern Chinese cities in a single week, paralyzing transport and prompting mass evacuations.

Record Heat, Record Storms

The Pacific Ocean, heated to record levels, is now brimming with typhoon energy. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) metric, which measures the total intensity of a season's storms, is forecast to be nearly double the 30-year average for South East and East Asia this year. El Niño is also pushing typhoon formation further east, allowing storms to spend more time over warm waters and intensify. "The Pacific can be likened to someone burning with fever," said Ana Liza Solis, head of climatology at the Philippines' national weather bureau. "It can go into convulsions soon," she warned at a September briefing in Manila.

Forecasts offer little relief. Last month, sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific soared to 4C above normal, the highest since records began in 1949, surpassing the previous record of 3.6C set in December 1997. China's climate agency has warned that temperatures will continue to rise over the next three months due to El Niño, raising fears across a region already battered by back-to-back storms.

Adapting to a New Normal

The human and economic toll is mounting. In August, Typhoon Chan-Hom surprised storm watchers in Japan by crossing the country from east to west, rather than the usual south-to-north path. Japan's well-prepared authorities evacuated people swiftly, but such efficiency is harder to achieve in neighboring countries with fewer resources.

To better understand the risks, Manila-based climatologist Rafaela Jane Delfino and colleagues simulated the effects of warmer conditions on the Philippines' most devastating storms, including 2013's Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), which killed more than 6,000 people. They found that higher temperatures increased total accumulated rainfall by 26% - a terrifying prospect for a country where flooding from monsoon rains and around 20 tropical storms a year is a major disaster risk. In recent years, floods have paralyzed entire cities for days, and frustrated Filipinos have protested against corruption they say siphons funds from flood-control projects.

Delfino, writing on the University of the Philippines website, stressed that leaders and officials must better understand climate hazards to prepare communities.

Countries are taking action. Japan has urged citizens to stockpile food and essentials and secure outdoor furniture that could become deadly projectiles. China is upgrading warning systems and identifying vulnerable areas. The Philippines and its South East Asian neighbors are preparing for food production disruptions, especially rice, and increasing support for farmers, including fertilizer provisions.

But long-term resilience remains uncertain. The United Nations Development Programme in Asia and the Pacific recently warned that the window for governments to act on El Niño is "closing." It noted: "How severely a community experiences an El Niño is decided years in advance, by where roads and settlements are built, how water is managed, who is covered by social protection and whether public budgets have room to absorb a shock. Every El Niño tests the resilience we have built; this one should also drive us to build more."

As the region braces for more storms, the challenge is clear: adapt to a fiercer climate or face increasingly devastating consequences.