pk-china-user When two typhoons made landfall in Shanghai within just three days, the unprecedented sequence became more than a meteorological milestone. It served as a real-world stress test for one of China’s most complex urban systems.
In September 2024, Typhoon Bebinca hit Shanghai at severe typhoon strength. Only three days later, Typhoon Pulasan made landfall, marking the first time since meteorological records began that the city had experienced two typhoons in such rapid succession.
The back-to-back storms underscored the challenge confronting the coastal metropolis: managing the combined threats of strong winds, torrential rain, storm surges and flooding triggered by extreme weather.
Shanghai’s vulnerability begins with its geography. Located near the mouth of the Yangtze River and facing the East China Sea, the city is naturally exposed to these overlapping hazards. Its vast urban scale further amplifies the risks, with more than 63,000 buildings eight stories or taller, 906 kilometers of rail transit lines, 13,000 glass-curtain-wall buildings, and approximately 267,000 outdoor billboards and storefront signs.
These figures illustrate the immense density of the megacity while also highlighting the countless points where extreme weather can cause widespread disruption.
“Against the backdrop of global warming, extreme wind and rainfall events in Shanghai are no longer isolated incidents,” said Shi Jiawen of the city’s climate center. According to Shi, such events are occurring with greater frequency, intensity and unpredictability.
Data also point to a growing trend. According to Xu Shuangquan, an official with the Shanghai Water Authority, the city’s maximum hourly rainfall between 2021 and 2025 increased by 13.3 percent compared with the previous five-year period. On July 31, 2025, hourly rainfall exceeded 100 millimeters in parts of Changning, Putuo and Baoshan districts, surpassing the threshold of a once-in-a-century rainfall event.
Typhoon behavior is evolving as well. Xu said global warming has contributed to a northward shift in typhoon tracks, making direct landfalls in Shanghai increasingly likely. The consecutive landfalls of Bebinca and Pulasan in 2024, followed by Co-May in 2025, represented what he described as a “historically rare” pattern.
For Shanghai, resilience increasingly depends on time — how early storms can be predicted, how quickly warnings can reach the public, and how much preparation can be completed before severe weather arrives.
In March 2025, the city established an artificial intelligence meteorological application innovation center and introduced two homegrown AI forecasting models, Yushi (“Rain Master”) and Fuyao (“Whirlwind”), both of which were deployed during that year’s flood season.
Yushi is designed to forecast sudden severe convective weather affecting Shanghai by analyzing three-dimensional radar data to monitor the formation and evolution of thunderstorm cells. Fuyao focuses on short-term heavy rainfall and thunderstorm winds, rapidly combining data from radar, satellites, automatic weather stations and numerical weather prediction models.
The AI models can generate forecasts within five to 10 seconds and update predictions every 10 minutes. During 13 severe convective weather events in 2025, Yushi increased warning lead times by 15 to 45 minutes. Early advisories for severe convection were also issued an average of four hours and 20 minutes before the weather reached affected areas.
Those additional minutes and hours are crucial during emergencies, allowing authorities to deploy pumping equipment, implement traffic control measures and issue targeted warnings at the district level.
Shanghai has also established a multi-tiered warning system. For typhoons, meteorological agencies begin monitoring conditions, conducting analyses and running AI-assisted track simulations five days before expected landfall. As the storm approaches, authorities progressively issue work notices, organize joint consultations, release warning signals and provide sector-specific risk alerts. For severe convective weather, which develops much more rapidly, the process is condensed into an imminent-warning mechanism activated one hour before impact.
The next challenge is ensuring the city can drain floodwater quickly enough.
