It’s likely that if you’ve spent any time in Bradford hospitals you will have been cared for by a nurse or doctor from the Phlippines – a nation of islands, larger than the UK, with a population approaching 100 million, just inside the tropics.

They will be very concerned for the safety of their families back home because of the typhoon – a Pacific hurricane – that has just wreaked havoc. Haiyan is probably the strongest ever recorded to cross populated land. With a central low pressure of 895 millibars, it was more destructive than hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans a few years back. With 1,000 millibars the average for normal atmospheric pressure, and a UK warm front around 990, anything close to 900 is dangerous.

Western media concentrate on Atlantic hurricanes, particularly if they track into the United States, and this year there’s been hardly a peep, with the lowest hurricane activity – two small ones – since 1950. On the other hand, the Pacific area has had 13 ‘super typhoons’ this year, with six, including Haiyan, hitting the Philippines, and the season is not yet over.

It’s worth remembering that the world is larger than the North Atlantic and bordering countries, and the real signs of global warming can be better seen in the East and in areas close to the tropics. The five strongest and most deadly super typhoons have all occurred since 1990, and the western Pacific (with the Arctic) is probably the best part of the globe to show evidence of a destabilised climate.

It’s all to do with warming water and a major ocean feature that dominates world climate. The trade winds drive water across the Pacific, from central America towards Asia and it piles up, a metre or so higher in the west, an enormous pool of hot water, getting hotter, that fuels the typhoons and influences continental climates. It is replaced close to South America by upwelling cold water, and is called la Nina, the little girl.

Every so often the warm water spills back east, swamping the cold currents, as el Nino, the Christ child, warming up the whole planet, causing droughts, and Atlantic hurricanes. The last el Nino of note was in 2005, and Katrina was one of the four category five hurricanes that assaulted the United States.

These typhoons feed off warm water and the western Pacific, in la Nina mode, is now heating up. The warmer it is the more water evaporates, and rises, cools and condenses, giving off more heat so rising again, and on it goes. Global warming may not cause more hurricanes and typhoons, but our fossil fuel excesses mean that they will certainly be more destructive.