How deadly storms claim a bigger toll

Aerial photo shows houses flattened by Typhoon Haiyan in the town of Guiuan in Samar province, central Philippines on November 11.

U.S. military personnel load relief goods for victims of Typhoon Haiyan at a military base in Manila on November 11.

The aid -- being loaded up by U.S. military personnel -- is destined for some of the worst-hit areas around Tacloban.

People ride past destruction in the coastal city of Tacloban. Many badly hit cities and islands were cut off, making it difficult to estimate the number of casualties early on.

A body lies amid the devastation in Tacloban.

People cover their noses to block the smell of bodies in Tacloban.

Bodies of victims lie along a road in Tacloban.

Survivors pass by two large boats after they were washed ashore by strong waves caused by Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban city, Leyte province.

A man searches through debris next to a ship washed ashore in Tacloban.

A large boat sits aground surrounded by debris in Tacloban on November 10.

Residents transport relief goods in Tacloban.

Two boys inspect debris in Tacloban.

U.S. Marines at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa, Japan, prepare emergency and rescue supplies to be delivered to the victims of Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philipines on November 10. More than 100 U.S. Marines and tons of rescue supplies are en route to the Philippines.

U.S. Marines in Okinawa check emergency and rescue supplies before their departure for the Philippines on November 10.

Residents carry a mattress taken from a hotel in Palo, eastern island of Leyte, Philippines, on November 10.

People walk past the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban.

People stand under a shelter in Tacloban.

Clothes dry on a line outside a stadium used as an evacuation center in Tacloban.

A girl peeks out from a makeshift shelter in Tacloban.

Typhoon survivors wait to receive relief goods at the Tacloban airport.

A woman mourns in front of her husband's dead body in a street of Tacloban.

Fallen trees litter the ground at the Tacloban airport in the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan on Saturday, November 9.

A resident passes victims' bodies on the street in Tacloban, a city in Leyte province.

People carry a victim of the typhoon in Tacloban.

A vehicle lies amid debris in Tacloban.

Vietnamese Red Cross staff members place sandbags on the roof of a house as they prepare for the arrival of Haiyan in the central provincial coastal city of Danang. Vietnam has started evacuating more than 100,000 people from the path of the typhoon.

The dead lie in floodwaters after the typhoon devastated the city of Tacloban. On Saturday, Philippine troops began to retrieve bodies strewn in areas devastated by the typhoon.

Devastation is everywhere in Iloilo in the central Philippines in the aftermath of the typhoon.

People walk past a victim left on the side of a road in Tacloban.

A resident passes an overturned car in Tacloban.

Rescue workers carry a woman about to give birth at a makeshift Department of Health medical center at the Tacloban airport in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban, Philippines, on November 9.

Residents return to their houses after leaving an evacuation site in Tacloban.

An airport lies in ruins in the city of Tacloban in the Philippines.

Astronaut Karen L. Nyberg took a picture of the typhoon from the International Space Station. Haiyan first landed near the cities of Dulag and Tacloban, flooding coastal communities with a surge of water and delivering 195-mph winds with gusts reaching as high as 235 mph.

Women walk past fallen trees and destroyed houses in Tacloban. Residents scoured supermarkets for water and food as they slowly emerged on streets littered with debris.

A soldier pulls a cable inside the devastated airport tower in Tacloban.

Houses are destroyed by the strong winds caused by the typhoon in Tacloban.

People stand on a pier on Friday, November 8, as the typhoon smashes into coastal communities on the central Philippine island of Bacolod.

Dark clouds brought by Typhoon Haiyan loom over the skyscrapers of Manila, Philippines, on November 8.

A woman carries a baby across a river November 8 at a coastal village in Las Pinas, Philippines.

A resident walks along a fishing village in Bacoor, Philippines, on November 8.

A house in Legazpi, Philippines, is engulfed by storm surge November 8.

A child wraps himself in a blanket November 8 inside a makeshift house along a Bacoor fishing village.

A woman and her children head for an evacuation center November 8 amid strong winds in Cebu City, Philippines.

Huge waves from Haiyan hit the shoreline in Legazpi on November 8.

A fisherman lifts a post to reinforce his home at a coastal village in Las Pinas on November 8.

A resident unloads nets off a fishing boat in Bacoor on November 8.

Residents clear a road November 8 after a tree was toppled by strong winds in the Philippine island province of Cebu.

A fisherman secures his wooden boat November 8 as Haiyan's strong winds hit Legazpi.

Residents reinforce their homes in Las Pinas on November 8.

Legazpi residents are relocated to an evacuation center on Thursday, November 7. About 125,000 people took refuge in evacuation centers, and hundreds of flights were canceled.

The storm approaches the Philippines in this satellite image taken November 7 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Haiyan's wind strength makes it equivalent to an exceptionally strong Category 5 hurricane.

Workers bring down a billboard in Makati, Philippines, on November 7 before Haiyan makes landfall.

In anticipation of the storm, fishermen carry a boat out of the water in Ormoc, Philippines, on November 7.

Philippine Coast Guard personnel stand in formation beside newly acquired rubber boats after a blessing ceremony in Manila on Wednesday, November 6. The boats were to be deployed to the central Philippines in preparation for Haiyan.

Typhoon caused devastating damage to parts of the Philippines

Higher temperatures are likely to increase power of severe storms, says Adam Sobel

Greater population living along the shore leads to bigger toll when storms strike, he says

Sobel: Higher sea level, a consequence of warming, magnifies flooding

Editor's note: Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is an atmospheric scientist. He studies extreme events -- such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and heat waves -- and the risks these pose to human society.

(CNN) -- Two days ago, an intensely powerful typhoon ripped through the midsection of the Philippines. Internationally known as Haiyan, the weakened but still dangerous storm has plowed into Vietnam. But history will record this as a Filipino disaster. I will call the typhoon by its Filipino name, Yolanda.

Yolanda might have been the most powerful land-falling tropical cyclone -- this being the generic scientific term as they are called typhoons, hurricanes or simply cyclones in different parts of the world -- ever recorded by meteorologists. More analysis will be needed to finalize that ruling. But it really doesn't matter now to the millions of people in the rubble of Yolanda's wake.

The strongest winds, in the narrow ring of Yolanda's perfectly circular eyewall, passed directly through Tacloban city, a provincial capital with more than 200,000 inhabitants. Photos coming from Tacloban show almost complete devastation.

An accurate death toll will take time, but it is nearly impossible to imagine that it won't be in the thousands. Numbers of more than 10,000, as in some early estimates, seem possible. Many, perhaps most, were not killed by the winds but were drowned by deep storm surges.

Yolanda may have broken records, and its direct hit on a major city was excruciatingly bad luck. But tropical cyclone death tolls in the thousands or higher are not nearly rare enough in the developing world.

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis likely killed more than 100,000 in Myanmar. And the Philippines, right in the world's worst cyclone highway, are hit very often. In December, Typhoon Bopha, nearly as strong as Yolanda, hit the southern island of Mindanao and killed more than a thousand.

Does it seem, in fact, that these weather disasters are happening more often? Well, they are.

The damage caused by tropical cyclones has risen dramatically in the past century everywhere it has been assessed. But essentially all of that is attributable to development of vulnerable coastlines, rather than changes in the storms themselves.

The population of the Philippines, rich in vulnerable coastlines, has roughly doubled in the past 30 years. There as elsewhere, more people are simply exposed to danger.

In the U.S., dollar losses from our hurricanes have exploded. Large numbers of American casualties, though, have become rare, despite big increases in the numbers of potential victims along the coasts. (Katrina in 2005 was the exception that proves that rule.) Better forecasts, warnings and evacuation procedures, as well as tougher building codes and other infrastructure measures, have achieved that.

Improvements are starting to take hold in the developing world as well. When Cyclone Phailin hit India's west coast last month, there was reason to fear a repeat of the 1999 cyclone that hit nearby Orissa, killing 10,000.

Instead, good advance warning and evacuations (with help from a storm weaker than some anticipated) kept Phailin's casualty count low. In the Philippines, many hundreds of thousands were reported to have been evacuated ahead of Yolanda. As awful as the death toll will surely be, it could just as surely have been much higher.

But are population growth, development and emergency management the whole story? Or is this disaster also related to global warming?

Well, it is.

Climate scientists expect that tropical cyclones should become more powerful as the climate warms. There may or may not be more of them; there may well be fewer. But the chance of getting one as strong as Yolanda -- the very worst kind -- may well be increasing.

Global warming may already, in fact, have contributed to Yolanda's power. We can't see that in the data; the numbers and intensities of tropical cyclones naturally fluctuate too much from year to year for us to clearly identify a rising trend underneath that would show warming's influence with certainty.

But that doesn't mean it's not there. If the time comes that we can detect the warming signal in cyclone activity well enough to make definitive statements, it will be because the storms have intensified to a frightening degree -- and irreversibly so, for all practical purposes.

Sea level rise is a much more certain consequence of warming, already easily detectable. That alone will make flooding -- likely Yolanda's deadliest weapon -- a more severe consequence of storms as the sea starts higher before the surge.

Today, as the Philippines reels from Yolanda, climate is not the main story.

Our thoughts should be with the survivors and those rushing in to help them. The way to save people and property from tropical cyclones, in the near and medium-term, is to get them out of harm's way -- in the days before landfall to the extent that's possible; and, even better, by not putting them there in the first place. But the changes we are making to the climate are not likely to help.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Adam Sobel.