Taiwan, the Philippines and China were lashed by the year’s most powerful typhoon last week, with schools, businesses and financial markets shutting down as wind speeds surged up to 227 kph.

China has already released disaster relief funds of at least 6.9 billion yuan ($951 million), Reuters calculations show. Stronger tropical storms are part of a wider phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.

Reuters spoke to two analysts – Professor Johnny Chan, Director of Asia-Pacific Typhoon Collaborative Research Center at City University Hong Kong, and Benjamin Horton, Director of the Earth Observatory at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University – on the adverse effects of typhoons and tropical storms and how they can be mitigated.