Complaint
The bulletin included a report from Japan on the impact of Typhoon Nanmadol.Β A viewer complained it was inaccurate for the reporter to say the number and severity of super typhoons in the Northwest Pacific had increased and to attribute this to the effects of climate change.
Outcome
The reporter was asked what scientists were saying about the influence of climate change on the typhoon and he responded as follows:
Well they’re absolutely linking it to climate change and also to the La Niña phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean this year, we’re in a La Niña year which will have exacerbated the size of this typhoon. But really this is part of a trend which we are very clearly seeing, the data is very apparent. In the late 70s, the 1970s, the Pacific Ocean used to produce about one super typhoon a year. Now we are seeing between four and five super typhoons developing in the western Pacific every year and that trend is expected to increase. Not only are these storms getting bigger and more frequent but they are moving further north, away from the Equator towards Japan, China and the Korean Peninsula and so this part of the world is just getting battered more often by bigger storms.
The ECU found that scientific studies supported what the reporter said about the increase in the number of typhoons of the kind he was describing, and concluded that the comments complained of were in fact duly accurate.
Not upheld