Abstract: Based on two of the most commonly used parameters in ocean hydrodynamic simulation, i.e. 10 m wind speed and sea level pressure, we obtained the typhoon centres, maximum wind speeds and central air pressures from the ECMWF ERA-Interim (ERA-I) reanalysis dataset and the most recently released ERA-5 reanalysis dataset, and used them to evaluate their representation of typhoons in the northwest Pacific region from 2013 to 2015. The results indicate that there are differences in the locations of the typhoon centres provided by the ECMWF reanalysis wind data and the measurement data. When the typhoon intensity decreases, the bias in the location of the typhoon centre in the ECMWF data increases. The maximum wind speed of typhoons in the reanalysis data is lower than that in the measurement data, whereas the central air pressure is higher. Although the precision of ERA-5 wind data is greatly improved for the simulation of typhoons from that of the ERA-I data, it is still not sufficiently accurate in the description of typhoon intensity in the northwest Pacific Ocean, which is underestimated. When the typhoon intensity increases, this underestimation is more obvious. In this study, we established an empirical correlation between the maximum wind speed of typhoons in ERA-5 and best-track data. On this basis, the ERA-5 data can be improved using a direct modification method without the requirement for observed typhoon track data. After validation based on the measured wind speed, the modified ERA-5 reanalysis data during the typhoon period was confirmed to have greatly improved accuracy compared to the original data.