A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls
in Guangdong, Southern China, Reconstructed from
Chinese Historical Documentary Records
Kam-biu Liu,* Caiming Shen,* and Kin-sheun Louie**
*Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University
**Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong
In China, the abundance of historical documentary records in the form of Fang Zhi (semiofficial local gazettes) offers
an extraordinary opportunity for providing a high-resolution historical dataset for the frequency of typhoon strikes.
We have reconstructed a 1,000-year time series of typhoon landfalls in the Guangdong Province of southern China
since AD 975 based on data compiled from Fang Zhi. Even though the 571 typhoon strikes recorded in the historical
documents probably underrepresent the total number of typhoon landfalls in Guangdong, calibration of the historical data against the observations during the instrumental period 1884–1909 suggests that the trends of the two
datasets are significantly correlated (r 0.71), confirming that the time series reconstructed from historical documentary evidence contains a reliable record of variability in typhoon landfalls. On a decadal timescale, the twentyyear interval from AD 1660 to 1680 is the most active period on record, with twenty-eight to thirty-seven typhoon
landfalls per decade. The variability in typhoon landfalls in Guangdong mimics that observed in other paleoclimatic
proxies (e.g., tree rings, ice cores) from China and the northern hemisphere. Remarkably, the two periods of most
frequent typhoon strikes in Guangdong (AD 1660 –1680, 1850–1880) coincide with two of the coldest and driest
periods in northern and central China during the Little Ice Age. Conceivably, the predominant storm tracks shifted
to the south during these cold periods, resulting in fewer landfalls in Japan and the east-central Chinese coast but
more typhoons hitting Guangdong. Spectral analysis of the Guangdong time series reveals an approximately fiftyyear cycle in typhoon landfall frequency. While the physical mechanism remains to be identified, it is tempting to
relate this periodicity to the pentadecadal variability identified in the North Pacific Index (NPI) time series. Key
Words: China, climate variability, historical climatology, typhoons.
T
ropical cyclones are an important component of
the ocean-atmosphere climate system. The environmental conditions controlling their formation,
development, and movement have been the subject of intensive research (e.g., Gray 1968, 1979; Emanuel 1988).
In recent years, much attention has been focused on the
factors affecting the interannual to multidecadal variations in tropical cyclone activity and on their relationship to global climate change (Lighthill et al. 1994;
Henderson-Sellers et al. 1998), particularly with regard
to hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin (e.g., Gray
1990; Landsea and Gray 1992; Landsea et al. 1992;
Lighthill et al. 1994; Goldenberg and Shapiro 1996; Diaz
and Pulwarty 1997; Gray, Sheaffer, and Landsea 1997;
Pielke and Pielke 1997; Elsner and Kara 1999). In the
western Pacific, the seasonal-to-decadal variation in tropical cyclone (including typhoon) activity has been related to large-scale climate controls such as the El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) (Pan 1981; Nicholls 1984;
Chan 1985; Revelle and Goulter 1986; Dong and Holland
1994; Lander 1994), the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO)
(Jury 1993; Chan 1995), and trade wind and monsoon circulations (Evans and Allen 1992). It is notable that all of
these studies are based on instrumental records of tropical
cyclone activities that span only the past few decades. In
this article, we produce a 1,000-year time series of typhoon
landfalls for the Guangdong Province in southern China,
based on Chinese historical documentary records. Such a
high temporal resolution dataset that spans the past millennium is vital for understanding the long-term variability in tropical cyclone activity and its teleconnections.
Few paleoclimatic proxies are available for providing annually resolvable records of tropical climate variability extending beyond the turn of the twentieth century. Paleotempestology, a science that studies tropical cyclone
activities of the past by means of geological proxy techniques and through historical records, is still in its infancy
(Liu 2000). Existing high-resolution data archives, such as
those for corals, tree rings, speleothems, and ice cores, offer
some potential but have not been shown to be effective in
reconstructing a 1,000-year record of tropical cyclone activity. The only proxy proven useful in paleotempestology—
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91(3), 2001, p. 453–464
© 2001 by Association of American Geographers
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.
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Liu, Shen, and Louie
overwash deposits in coastal lake sediments (Liu and Fearn
1993, 2000a, 2000b)—lacks the chronological precision to
reconstruct storm events at annual or even decadal resolution. The abundance of historical documentary records
from China offers a rare opportunity for providing an annually resolvable historical dataset for typhoon landfalls.
Chinese historical documents provide a tremendous
source of valuable data on past weather and climate.
Wang and coauthors (Wang 1979; Wang and Zhang
1988, 1991, 1992) have provided extensive and detailed
evaluations of Chinese historical documentary data
sources with regard to weather and climate phenomena.
Zhang and Crowley (1989), among others, have discussed
methods of data processing and quantification. Chinese
historical documentary records have been used successfully for the reconstruction of a wide range of weather and
climate phenomena, such as winter and summer temperatures, summer precipitation, snowfalls, plum rain (meiyu),
floods and droughts, thunder and lightning, and dustfalls
(Wang 1980; Zhang 1980, 1984, 1991a, 1991b; Wang
and Zhao 1981; Central Meteorological Bureau 1982;
Wang and Chu 1982; Zhang and Liu 1987; Zhang, Zhang,
and Xu 1988; Chen 1989; Zhang and Crowley 1989;
Zhang and Wang 1989, 1991; Gong and Hameed 1991;
Wang and Zhang 1991, 1992; Wang et al. 1992). Wang
and Zhang (1992) have produced an extensive review
and synthesis of these paleoclimatic indicators with regard to the historical changes in the climatic patterns of
China under the influence of the East Asian Monsoon. In
this article, we focus on the reconstruction of typhoon
landfalls, an aspect rarely examined in previous studies.
Recently, Chan and Shi (2000) published a study that
examines the frequency of typhoon landfalls in the
Guangdong Province during the period 1470–1931 based
on local government records compiled by Qiao and Tang
(1993). Even though their study and ours focus on the
same province, we use a different data source (Lee and
Hsu 1989) and a much larger and more complete dataset.
Consequently, our findings and conclusions are also
somewhat different, and in some cases significantly different. We also discuss methodological issues relating to the
reliability of historical documentary records and perform
a unique exercise to calibrate our historical dataset with
the instrumental record. Finally, we evaluate the paleoclimatic significance of our typhoon time series by comparing it with other paleoclimatic proxy records.
the world. On average, approximately 26.9 tropical cyclones occur in the Northwest Pacific per year, compared
with 9.8 in the Atlantic basin, including the Gulf of
Mexico (Landsea 2000). Guangdong (including Hong
Kong and Hainan Island in this study; latitudes 18 –
25N, longitudes 108 –117E), the southernmost province of China, is particularly vulnerable to catastrophic
strikes by landfalling typhoons (Figure 1). From 1949 to
1988, 380 tropical cyclones made landfalls in the coastal
areas of China. Of these landfalling tropical cyclones,
158 (43 percent) struck Guangdong. This translates to
an average of about four strikes per year (Liang and Ye
1993). In terms of intensity, 21 percent of the landfalling
tropical cyclones in Guangdong are classified as typhoons (wind speed 118 km/hr). The rest are classified
as strong tropical storms (27 percent), tropical storms
(23 percent), and tropical depressions (29 percent)
(Guangdong Sheng Ziran Zaihai Dituji Editorial Board
1995).
Guangdong is one of the fastest growing economic regions of China. Four of the five Special Economic Zones
(SEZs) in China, as well as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, are situated in Guangdong. The
province’s long and exposed coastline also makes it highly
vulnerable to catastrophic storm surges and coastal
flooding during typhoon landfalls. As recently as 1996,
the landfall of Typhoon Sally south of Guangzhou resulted in more than 130 people killed, thousands injured,
dozens missing, 272,000 houses destroyed, and 1.2 million more houses damaged. It forced a massive evacuation
of 170,000 people and damaged 1.7 million acres of farmland. Economic losses were estimated to have exceeded
The Study Region
The Northwest Pacific basin has the highest frequency and intensity of tropical cyclone occurrence in
Figure 1. Location of Guangdong Province, including Hainan Island and Hong Kong (shaded), in relation to the generalized tracks
of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific Basin (after Jiao 1984).
A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong, Southern China
$1.5 billion. Thus, realistic assessment of the risks and
damages associated with typhoon landfalls has become
increasingly important because of the rapid pace of economic development and heavy capital investment in
Guangdong and other parts of the Chinese coastal zone.
Sources of Historical Documentary Data
The term jufeng (predecessor of the modern term
taifeng, i.e., typhoon) first appeared in Chinese historical
literature during the reign of the Song Kingdom of the
South-North Dynasty, around AD 470 (Louie and Liu
2001). During the following Tang Dynasty (AD 618–
907), two typhoon strikes were unequivocally recorded.
Beginning in the Northern Song Dynasty (AD 960–
1126), the Chinese central government has maintained
a regular record of typhoon strikes reported by local administrative authorities (Louie and Liu 2001). Thus, the
Chinese documentary typhoon record spans at least
1,000 years, about twice as long as the documentary
record for North American hurricanes (Ludlam 1963;
Millas 1968; Caviedes 1991; Neumann et al. 1999).
Records of typhoon activities are mainly available in
two broad groups of Chinese historical documents. First,
the “Official History” (Zheng Shi) of each dynasty contains such data. It is a long tradition in China that each
“Official History” includes a chapter that records the
natural disasters (such as typhoon strikes) occurring in
the dynasty concerned. These chapters, usually called
“Record of the Five Elements” (Wu Xing Zhi) or “Record
of Disasters” (Zai Yi Zhi), can be found in sixteen of
the twenty-six “Official Histories” that survive until the
present (Wang 1981). Since they are official records
compiled from the archives kept by the central government, they are in general more accurate and more focused than the unofficial and local government records,
in that they catalog only catastrophic events occurring at
a large scale, causing significant casualties, or requiring
government relief work.
Second, there are the local gazettes (Fang Zhi) compiled mainly by individual counties (xian), but also by
other local administrative units such as provinces (sheng),
districts (fu or zhou), and villages (xiang). These are semigovernmental documents published at different time periods and updated during different intervals. The systematic compilation of such local gazettes began in the
Northern Song Dynasty, but the overwhelming majority
of the gazettes that we still see today were published in
the Ming (AD 1368–1644) and Qing (AD 1644–1911)
Dynasties (Zhou 1994; Lai 1995). These local gazettes
contain a fairly complete catalog of all major cultural and
455
natural events, including natural disasters such as typhoon strikes. The raw data basically came from the local government archives or from information collected
among the local population. The number of the local
events thus recorded was truly remarkable. For example,
the seven editions of the Nanhai County (Guangdong)
gazette, compiled in AD 1609, 1642, 1691, 1741, 1835,
1872, and 1911, register a total of fifty-three typhoon
strikes in this particular county between AD 975 and
1911 (Qiao and Tang 1993, 223–88). By combining the
data contained in the “Official Histories” and the local
gazettes, a fairly complete and detailed record of typhoon
strikes can be extracted for the coastal areas of China
during the last 1,000 years.
The following example illustrates the kind of data
that can be extracted. One of the earliest unequivocally
recorded typhoon landfalls in China occurred in AD 975
in Guangdong Province and was registered in the “Official History” of the Song Dynasty (Song Shi). The following is a translation of the relevant paragraph: “In the
tenth lunar month of the eighth year of the reign of Kai
Bao [i.e., November AD 975], the city of Guangzhou was
struck by a jufeng. Two zhang [a traditional Chinese measurement unit that equals about three meters] of rain fell
within a day and night. The sea rose. Some boats were
blown away and lost” (Song Shi 1985, chapter 67, 1486; see
also Figure 2). A similar entry on this typhoon strike can
also be found in at least six local gazettes of adjacent
counties, providing independent verification of the accuracy of the recorded event.
Some entries contain vivid descriptions of catastrophic destruction or damages that may provide clues
about the intensity of the typhoon. For example, in September AD 1618, a powerful typhoon struck the region
of Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong. The event was registered in the “Official History” of the Ming Dynasty
(Ming Shi), as well as in at least seven local gazettes, with
different details about the damages. The following is an
excerpt from the Puning County gazette compiled in AD
1745 about this event: “In the 8th lunar month a jufeng
brought heavy rain. The water level rose quickly to more
than a xin [a traditional Chinese measurement unit
equaling approximately 2.4 meters], reaching higher
than the gate of the walled city. The water was reddish
brown in color. It took five days for the water to recede”
(Puning Xian Zhi 1974, 383). Ming Shi (1974, chapter 28,
454) and some of the other local gazettes reported that
more than 12,500 persons were drowned and about
30,000 houses destroyed in the six counties affected by
this typhoon strike. Similarly, the Huizhou District gazette compiled in AD 1877 reported a typhoon strike in
AD 1636 and gave the following details: “In the 6th lu-
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Liu, Shen, and Louie
Figure 2. A page from the “Official History” of the Song dynasty (Song Shi, chapter 67), containing a record of a typhoon strike in AD 975
(highlighted section). At least four other typhoon strikes at different locations are also recorded on this page.
nar month a jufeng occurred. The roof of the Sizhou Pagoda [in Huiyang County] was blown away; it fell about
five li [a traditional Chinese measurement unit equaling
about 300 meters] away” (Huizhou Fu Zhi 1881, chapter
17, p. 47).
Entries like these may permit estimation of the intensity or damage potential of the typhoon according to the
Saffir-Simpson Intensity Scale (Neumann et al. 1999) or
the Fujita Damage Scale (Fujita 1971).
Material and Methods
It would be a laborious task to sift through the hundreds of voluminous historical documents to extract a
millennial record of typhoons for any coastal province of
China. Fortunately, for the Guangdong Province, a detailed inventory of typhoon strikes has been compiled
and tabulated by Lee and Hsu (1989), which provides
the data used in our study. In their compilation, Lee and
Hsu (1989) used eighty-one volumes of local government gazettes from sixty counties or districts of Guang-
dong (including Hainan Island), as well as the provincial
gazettes for Guangdong and imperial government documents of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
Most of these local gazettes were written or last updated
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but some are
from as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Lee and Hsu’s
inventory table lists 571 records of typhoon strikes from
AD 975 to 1909 during a period of 935 years. By contrast,
Chan and Shi’s (2000) recent study used only local gazettes from twenty-two cities or counties in the vicinity
of Guangzhou in the central part of Guangdong Province—a small subset of our dataset. Although they did
not explicitly state the number of landfall events included in their dataset, the inventory compiled by Qiao
and Tang (1993)—their data source—lists only 203.
In Lee and Hsu’s (1989) inventory, the storm records
are listed by place and by the date according to the Chinese lunar calendar. They include only those records
that mention typhoons explicitly, and exclude those that
merely pertain to “tidal surges” or “sea surges,” because
the latter events may be caused by tsunamis or winter
storms and are not by themselves diagnostic of a typhoon
A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong, Southern China
landfall. In cases where an event occurring on the same
day or over an interval of a few days is recorded in the local gazettes of several neighboring counties, it is counted
as a single event. Thus, the 571 events contained in the
historical record represent individual typhoon strikes
without duplication.
We extended this 935-year historical documentary
record to a total length of 1,025 years by appending to it
the instrumental observational record for the period between 1885 and 1999 (Chin 1972; Wang 1991). The instrumental record published by Wang (1991) lists 126
tropical cyclones striking Guangdong from 1885 to 1909.
Chin’s (1972) atlas displays the storm tracks and intensity of 157 tropical cyclones making landfall in Guangdong from 1910 to 1944. For the post-1945 period we
used the data available on Unisys’s (2000) hurricane/
tropical data Web site page, from which we enumerated
279 landfalling tropical cyclones striking Guangdong.
The historical and instrumental records overlap (see below) for an interval of twenty-six years (1884–1909).
Even though the data are more complete and continuous
after AD 1400 than in the earlier period, this 1025-year,
county-by-county record of 1,133 tropical cyclone landfalls from Guangdong is the longest documentary record
yet of tropical cyclone landfalls in the world.
Lee and Hsu (1989) did not quantitatively analyze or
climatologically interpret the historical typhoon record
they compiled. In this study, we quantified their inventory and developed a quantitative time series that contains 571 typhoon strikes by year and month, by affected
counties, and by the nature of damage. We present the
data here graphically year-by-year, and also aggregate
them into 10-, 50-, and 100-year intervals to show the
temporal variations in landfall frequencies at decadal to
centennial time scales. In addition, we analyzed the data
statistically using spectral analysis (SPSS for Windows
8.0 and STATISTICA for Windows 4.5) to detect periodicity. For the spectral analysis, we used the annual typhoon
counts for the most recent 500 years (1410–1909) as input
after the data had been detrended. We compared the historical typhoon time series with other paleoclimatic proxy
records in China to highlight regional patterns of climatic
changes and to reveal possible teleconnections.
Data Validation
The fact that a twenty-six-year overlap exists between
Lee and Hsu’s (1989) inventory and the instrumental observational dataset (Chin 1972; Wang 1991) offers an
unusual opportunity to evaluate the reliability of the historical documentary data. To standardize the dating of
457
events, we converted the lunar calendar months and
days used in the historical inventory into Gregorian calendar dates.
The historical inventory contains forty-one typhoon
strikes during the twenty-six years between 1884 and
1909. By comparison, Wang (1991) lists 126 tropical cyclones affecting Guangdong during the same period, of
which 92 are classified as typhoons at landfall and 33 as
tropical storms or tropical depressions. Among the fortyone strikes listed in the historical dataset, thirty-two (78
percent) can be matched with specific typhoons included
in the instrumental dataset. Remarkably, all of these entries are classified as typhoons in intensity in Wang’s
dataset; none are classified as tropical storms or tropical
depressions. This suggests that the storm events recorded
in the local gazettes reflect mostly the more intense
storms (i.e., typhoons), rather than the weaker tropical
storms or depressions. This interpretation is supported by
the fact that most of the entries in the local gazettes contain specific descriptions about wind or rain damages, including some that are disastrous.
Nine of the forty-one storm events recorded in the
historical dataset cannot be reliably identified with any
tropical cyclones in the instrumental dataset. The reason
for this discrepancy is unclear. It is possible that the date
(month or year) recorded in the historical documents
may be in error, or that the storm may have been caused
by other weather disturbances and misidentified as a typhoon strike. It is also possible that the instrumental
record may be incomplete or inaccurate, as the sparse observation network in the early instrumental period could
have missed some minor storms.
Figure 3 shows the annual number of storm events (including both typhoons and tropical storms) listed in the
historical and instrumental records for the twenty-six
overlapping years. Clearly, the historical record underrepresents the total number of landfalls in the instrumental record. However, the discrepancy is considerably
reduced if the tropical storms are excluded from the instrumental record. More importantly, the trends of the
historical curve and the two instrumental curves (all
storms and typhoon-only) are positively correlated (r 0.71; r 0.65, respectively, significant at the 0.01 confidence level), suggesting that the time series reconstructed
from the historical documentary record can be used quantitatively as a proxy for the frequency of typhoon landfalls
in Guangdong.
As a whole, the historical data extracted from Fang
Zhi provide a reliable record of the major typhoon landfalls in Guangdong. The record is remarkably accurate for
typhoon strikes that are unusual or memorable in terms of
frequency, date of occurrence, or the damage they in-
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Liu, Shen, and Louie
Figure 3. Annual number of typhoon strikes recorded in the historical documentary record during the twenty-six-year period from 1884 to
1909 (thin solid line, bottom), compared with the total number of landfalling typhoons and tropical storms (Tc; dotted line, top) and typhoons
only (Tp; thick solid line, middle) according to the instrumental record for the same period.
flicted. The following provide a few examples. The
Yangjiang County gazette records three successive typhoon strikes on the twentieth, twenty-third, and
twenty-ninth day of the eighth lunar month in 1893—
an unusually high frequency within ten days. These
entries can be matched with three typhoons making
landfalls on 29 September, 2 October, and 8 October respectively in the instrumental record. The Qiongshan
County (on Hainan Island) gazette records and remarks
on an unusually early typhoon strike on the twentyninth day of the fourth lunar month in 1894 which
matches an instrumentally observed typhoon landfall in
eastern Hainan Island on May 30. Seven destructive typhoons occurring in 1897, 1906, and 1908, the devastations of which were described in vivid detail in the local
gazettes, can also be verified in the instrumental record.
Results
During the entire 935-year period, 571 typhoons were
recorded as having struck Guangdong. This translates
into an average of 6.1 strikes per decade. Figure 4 shows
a year-by-year compilation of hurricane frequencies for
the period 1000–1900. It is clear that the record was sporadic and probably very incomplete during the early centuries of record keeping, but became more continuous
after about AD 1400. Thus, if we consider only the 510year period from AD 1400 to AD 1909, the frequency is
about 10.9 strikes per decade, or about 1.1 strike per year.
This reconstructed frequency is much lower than that
typical of the past century, about 4 strikes per year. To illustrate this point, we appended the instrumental record
for all tropical cyclones (Tc) striking Guangdong for the
Figure 4. Year-by-year plot of typhoon strikes in Guangdong during AD 1000–1900, compiled from the historical documentary record. The
continuous curve shows the twenty-one-year moving averages smoothed from the annual time series.
A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong, Southern China
459
Figure 5. Decadal sums of typhoons striking Guangdong during AD 1000–1999. Data for the period 1000–1909 (thin solid line) are from the
historical documentary record. Data for the period 1909–1999 (dotted line) are from the instrumental observation record and include all tropical cyclones (Tc; typhoons and tropical storms). The thick solid line shows the frequency of typhoons only (Tp) for the period after 1945.
period AD 1909–1999 (Chin 1972; Wang 1991) to the
historical documentary dataset and aggregated the entire
1,025-year time series into ten-year intervals (Figure 5).
The marked difference in frequency between the historical documentary period and the instrumental observation period clearly shows that the historical documentary record underrepresents the total number of tropical
cyclones striking Guangdong. However, if the weaker
tropical cyclones (i.e., tropical storms) are excluded from
the observation period and only the landfalling typhoons
(Tp) are plotted, then the frequencies contained in the
documentary and instrumental datasets are quite comparable (Figure 5). This reinforces the conclusion based on
our twenty-six-year calibration study that the storm
events recorded in the historical documentary evidence
mainly represent landfalls by strong tropical cyclones
(i.e., typhoons) and not tropical storms. This is a reason-
able inference because the more intense typhoons, which
usually resulted in more devastating impacts, were more
likely to be recorded in the local gazettes than were the
weaker tropical storms.
The decadal typhoon frequency data (Figure 5) show
that the 20-year interval from AD 1660 to 1680 is the
most active period in the record, with twenty-eight to
thirty-seven typhoon landfalls per decade. A secondary
peak occurs between AD 1850 and 1880. As a corollary,
the 50-year interval between AD 1650 and 1700 contains more typhoon landfalls in Guangdong than any
other intervals before the twentieth century, followed by
the interval between AD 1850 and 1900 (Figure 6). On
the other hand, the 150-year interval between AD 1700
and 1850 has fewer typhoon landfalls than both the preceding and succeeding periods. On a 100-year plot (Figure 6), the eighteenth century is marked by fewer ty-
Figure 6. Frequency of typhoon strikes in Guangdong plotted by 50-year (solid line, shaded) and 100-year (dotted line) intervals, AD 1000–
1900, based on the historical documentary record.
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Liu, Shen, and Louie
phoon landfalls in Guangdong than the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries. The climatological mechanism
responsible for the remarkable increase in typhoon activity during the late seventeenth century and its apparent decline during the eighteenth century remains
to be identified.
The most active period of typhoon landfalls, AD
1660–1680, coincides with the Maunder Minimum, a
period with near-zero annual sunspot numbers that
lasted from about AD 1645 to 1715 (Stuiver and Quay
1980). However, the relationship between solar activity
and typhoon activity is unclear. It is also notable that the
seventeenth to nineteenth centuries correspond roughly
with the Little Ice Age, a time of colder and drier climate
in eastern China. Remarkably, winter temperature data
reconstructed for the lower Yangtze River basin suggest
that, within the Little Ice Age, the eighteenth century
was relatively warm compared with the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries (Zhang 1991b). The coincidence
between lowered typhoon activity in Guangdong and
warmer winters in the central and northern parts of
China during the eighteenth century hints at a negative
correlation (see below). The climatological connection
between regional or global climatic changes, such as the
Little Ice Age, and tropical cyclone activity is one of
the most important questions in climatic research (Lighthill et al. 1994; Emanuel 1997; Henderson-Sellers et al.
1998). Understanding the answer to that question is important to the prediction of future typhoon activity, especially under various scenarios of global warming.
The general trend of typhoon landfalls in Guangdong
correlates well with trends of other climatic proxies from
China and elsewhere. In Figure 7, we plotted the twentyone-year moving mean curve for Guangdong typhoon
landfalls (curve g) on the same time axis as the curves for
six other climatic proxies. Curves a to d denote the phenologically derived temperature in China, the winter
temperature index in the lower Yangtze River basin, the
number of counties affected by drought, and the frequency of dust rains in China (Zhang and Crowley
1989). Curves e and f show the April-to-July precipitation in Huashan (north-central China) reconstructed
from tree-ring data (Hughes et al. 1994), and the northern hemisphere temperature anomaly during the past
millennium derived from a variety of data sources (Mann,
Bradley, and Hughes 1999).
Figure 7 makes apparent that, paradoxically, the two
peaks in Guangdong typhoon landfalls (in AD 1660–
1680 and 1850–1880) occurred at times when the climate in the northern hemisphere as a whole and in the
northern and central parts of China in particular was the
coldest and driest of the last 500 years. Again, the appar-
Figure 7. (a) Phenological temperatures; (b) Winter temperatures
in the Yangtze valley; (c) Chinese counties affected by drought; (d)
Dust rain frequency; (e) Proxy April-July precipitation after Hughes
et al. (1994), reproduced with permission of University of Washington; (f) Northern hemisphere temperature anomaly (twenty-oneyear moving average) after Mann, Bradley, and Hughes (1999), reproduced with permission of American Geophysical Union; (g)
comparison between Guangdong typhoon landfalls (twenty-oneyear moving mean) and other paleoclimatic time-series for the
northern hemisphere and northern and central China. Other data
from Zhang and Cowley (1989), reproduced with permission of
American Meteorological Society.
ent negative correlation between typhoon activities in
Guangdong and temperature in mid- and high latitudes
seems to be at odds with conventional wisdom, because
A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong, Southern China
cooler climate and somewhat lowered sea surface temperatures during the Little Ice Age, such as have been reported from the subtropical Atlantic Ocean (Keigwin
1996), are supposed to reduce hurricane activity and,
particularly, intensity (Emanuel 1997). However, the
colder, drier, and windier (as suggested by increased frequency of dust storms) climate in northern and central
China during the Little Ice Age could have been caused
by an intensification of westerlies. Stronger westerlies, a
southward shift of the subtropical anticyclone, and lower
sea surface temperatures in the midlatitude Northwest
Pacific—especially during the typhoon season in the
summer—could have displaced the predominant storm
tracks to the south.
This interpretation is reinforced by recent findings of
major fluctuations in the atmospheric circulation of the
western Pacific region during the middle of the seventeenth century, resulting in significant displacements of the
monsoon trough (Garcia et al. in press). As a result of
these large-scale shifts in the wind system of the western
Pacific, more typhoons could have struck Guangdong,
whereas fewer would have reached north to strike Fujian,
Shanghai, or Japan, even if the frequency of typhoon formation had remained the same or decreased slightly. If
true, this scenario would imply that the time series of typhoon landfalls from Guangdong would correlate negatively with that from other coastal provinces to the
north. Remarkably, an inverse relationship has been
found in the historical hurricane records between the
Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico coast of North
America, and has been attributed to changes in the
North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and the shifting positions of the Bermuda High (Liu 1999; Elsner, Liu,
and Kocher 2000; Liu and Fearn 2000b). A similar
north-south shift in predominant storm tracks and resultant landfall locations in the western Pacific, regardless of the physical mechanism, may explain the association between increased typhoon landfalls in Guangdong
and colder, drier, windier climate in northern and central
China during the Little Ice Age.
Figure 5 shows that cyclic changes seem to occur in
the peaks of typhoon landfall frequencies after AD 1600.
The cyclic pattern can also be seen by plotting the historical typhoon time series as twenty-one-year running
averages to filter the noise (Figures 4 and 7g). Spectral
analysis of the data confirms that there is a marked fiftyyear periodicity (significant at the 0.01 level) in typhoon
landfalls. Remarkably, this cycle also seems to exist in
the observational dataset for the current century (Figure
5). This phenomenon is most intriguing and requires a climatological forcing mechanism to explain. Recently, in an
analysis of the North Pacific Index (NPI) time series for
461
the period between 1899 and 1997, Minobe (1997,
1999) found a periodicity of fifty to seventy years (i.e.,
the “pentadecadal variability”) and attributed it to the
delayed negative-feedback processes in the atmosphere
and ocean. However, it remains unclear if and how
the North Pacific Index (which mainly represents the
strength of the Aleutian low) may be linked to typhoon
activities in the northwest Pacific. In any case, understanding the climatological mechanisms responsible for
the multidecadal variability is vital for any effort to
predict future typhoon landfall probabilities for southern China.
Conclusions
The historical records preserved in the Fang Zhi in
China constitute an extraordinarily rich source of high
temporal resolution paleoclimatological information for
the past millennium. These data are also of very high
spatial resolution, because local gazettes are available
from virtually every county or other local administrative
unit in China. Historical records from these local gazettes can be cross-checked with or supplemented by
more official records kept at the higher administrative
levels, such as the “Official Histories” and the imperial
government documents of the Ming and Qing Dynasties,
including in particular the Ming Veritable Records (Ming
Shi Lu), Qing Veritable Records (Qing Shi Lu), and Palace
Memorials Holdings (Zhu Pi Dan), now kept in Beijing
and Taipei (Zhuang 1983; Qin 1994). Over 8,200 titles
of Fang Zhi (a title usually consists of several volumes)
from all the counties or other local or regional administrative units are available for the whole of China—an
enormous wealth of historical and geographical information (Beijing Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences 1985). The millennial history of typhoon landfalls in Guangdong we reconstructed here illustrates the
potential of this historical data source for paleoclimatic
studies.
A key issue in using historical documentary evidence
for paleoclimatic reconstruction concerns data reliability
and verification. Previous studies of Chinese typhoon activities based on historical documentary data (Lee and
Hsu 1989; Chan and Shi 2000) rarely address methodological issues explicitly. By quantitatively and qualitatively comparing the records over a twenty-six-year
period in which the historical and the instrumental
datasets overlap, we have provided an unusual example
that shows the importance of data validation and calibration for paleotempestology based on historical documentary evidence. The results suggest that, even though
462
Liu, Shen, and Louie
the historical dataset only accounts for about 30 percent
of the total number of landfalling tropical cyclones in
Guangdong, it probably includes the majority of the intense typhoons, especially those that inflicted catastrophic damages to the local communities. More importantly, a quantitative comparison between the historical
and instrumental datasets shows that they are significantly correlated and have similar trends. This confirms
that the climatic time series derived from the historical
documentary dataset can be used quantitatively to reconstruct the variability of typhoon landfall activities
over the past several centuries.
The 1,025-year time series of typhoon landfalls for
Guangdong is the longest chronology of tropical cyclone
activity in the world, even though the record is continuous only after the 1400s. Quantitative analysis of this
historical dataset reveals distinct multidecadal variability in typhoon landfalls, with a prominent peak occurring in between AD 1660 and 1680 and another occurring between 1850 and 1880.
Two findings are especially relevant to understanding
the climate dynamics of typhoons in the western Pacific
and to the long-term prediction of typhoon activity.
First, the discovery of an apparent fifty-year cycle in typhoon landfalls suggests an external forcing mechanism,
which remains to be identified. Notably, this periodicity
seems to have continued in the twentieth century, with
peaks in Guandong typhoon landfalls occurring between
1900 and 1940 and between 1970 and 1980. If this pattern persists, another phase of heightened typhoon activity in Guangdong may occur in the 2020s or 2030s. Second, and most intriguingly, the periods of most active
typhoon landfalls in Guangdong (1660–1680, 1850–
1880) seem to coincide with the coldest and driest episodes of the Little Ice Age in China. One plausible explanation for this pattern is that the predominant tracks
of typhoons may have shifted to the south during these
cold and dry episodes, so that fewer typhoons struck the
east-central Chinese coast (i.e., provinces north of
Guangdong) but more made landfall in Guangdong.
This hypothesis can be tested by examining the typhoon
records of all other coastal provinces during these periods
to see if an inverse relationship exists in landfall frequencies between Guangdong and other coastal provinces
to the north. Research is currently under way to test
this hypothesis.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from NSF
(ATM-995329) and the Risk Prediction Initiative of the
Bermuda Biological Station for Research (RPI-96-048).
We owe our gratitude to Sheng-I Hsu, who, together
with Kit Lee, did the laborious compilation of the Fang
Zhi data from Guangdong and whose work inspired us to
undertake this research. We thank P. Bartlein, D. Stahle,
and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments, and M. L. Eggart for cartographic assistance.
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Correspondence: Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, U.S., e-mail: kliu1@
lsu.edu (Liu); Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, U.S., e-mail:
[email protected] (Shen); Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong,
e-mail: [email protected] (Louie).