Climate change and El Niño supercharged Typhoon Dolphin, the farthest-origin storm ever to hit China

Dolphin formed 6,000 km from the coast, lived three times longer than a typical typhoon, and shattered rainfall records across inland China. Scientists say a warmer climate and El Niño supplied the fuel.

Typhoon Dolphin has moved off the coast, but it is still raining. The storm — the 13th typhoon of the year — made landfall in Zhejiang province on Sunday, then kept dumping record rainfall across eastern, central and northern China, hundreds of kilometres from the sea.

Dolphin was no ordinary storm. It formed near the International Date Line, roughly 6,000 km east of Zhejiang, making it the farthest-origin typhoon ever to make landfall in China. Its 16-day lifespan was about three times that of a typical typhoon.

The rainfall figures are extreme. Single-day records were smashed at 13 weather stations nationwide. Zhejiang province averaged 215 mm between Aug 7 and 11 — a record for any typhoon landfall there — while the city of Taizhou averaged 438 mm. Pushing inland, the storm rewrote records across Hubei and Henan, and even grazed Beijing, where one district soaked up 90.7 mm in a single hour, its highest hourly total since records began in 1954.

The Global Times reported the remnants are expected to stall near the Hubei–Henan–Anhui border and collide with cold air, triggering another round of heavy rain. Henan activated a Level II flood-control response after a village in Yexian county recorded 356.9 mm of rain, and China Daily said more than 65,000 residents have been relocated. The Guardian reported thousands more were evacuated in Beijing, where forecasters warned of more than 150 mm in 24 hours — over a third of the capital's average annual rainfall.

The science behind the fury: a warmer atmosphere holds roughly 7% more water vapour for every degree of warming, giving storms a bigger reservoir to draw on. Meanwhile El Niño pushes typhoon formation further east, granting storms a longer stretch of warm ocean to intensify over. Researchers cited by AsiaOne estimate the probability of a typhoon striking East Asia has climbed from 33% to 65% — and they expect more storms like Dolphin this year.