Global warming is raising the danger from typhoons, Taiwan experts warned Monday, saying the island may be hit in a year or two by a powerful storm like the one which killed more than 700 last August.
Typhoon Morakot dumped a record 3,000 millimetres (120 inches) of rainfall and caused massive mudslides in the south of the island, and the government should be prepared for similar disasters in the future, they said.
"A typhoon as powerful as Morakot is very likely to strike Taiwan in a year or two," said Wang Chung-ho, a research fellow at the Institute of the Earth Sciences at Taiwan's top academic body Academia Sinica.
– If indeed such a threat to Taiwan, surely means Hong Kong will face greater impacts from typhoons.