Declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming

Chand, Savin S.; Walsh, Kevin E.; Camargo, Suzana J.; Kossin, James P.; Tory, Kevin J.; Wehner, Michael F.; Chan, Johnny C. L.; Klotzbach, Philip J.; Dowdy, Andrew J.; Bell, Samuel S.; Ramsay, Hamish A.; Murakami, Hiroyuki

doi:10.1038/s41558-022-01388-4

Declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming

Journal Article · Mon Jun 27 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · Nature Climate Change

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01388-4· OSTI ID:1876856

^[1]; Walsh, Kevin E. ^[2]; ^[3]; Kossin, James P. ^[4]; Tory, Kevin J. ^[5]; ^[6]; ^[7]; Klotzbach, Philip J. ^[8]; ^[5]; Bell, Samuel S. ^[5]; Ramsay, Hamish A. ^[9]; Murakami, Hiroyuki ^[10]

Federation University, Ballarat (Australia)
University of Melbourne, VIC (Australia)
Columbia University, New York, NY (United States)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Madison, WI (United States); The Climate Service, Madison, WI (United States)
Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne (Australia)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon (Hong Kong)
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO (United States)
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO),Aspendale, VIC (Australia)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Princeton, NJ (United States)

Assessing the role of anthropogenic warming from temporally inhomogeneous historical data in the presence of large natural variability is difficult and has caused conflicting conclusions on detection and attribution of tropical cyclone (TC) trends. Here, using a reconstructed long-term proxy of annual TC numbers together with high-resolution climate model experiments, we show robust declining trends in the annual number of TCs at global and regional scales during the twentieth century. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) dataset is used for reconstruction because, compared with other reanalyses, it assimilates only sea-level pressure fields rather than utilize all available observations in the troposphere, making it less sensitive to temporal inhomogeneities in the observations. It can also capture TC signatures from the pre-satellite era reasonably well. The declining trends found are consistent with the twentieth century weakening of the Hadley and Walker circulations, which make conditions for TC formation less favourable.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation; National Environmental Science Program (NESP); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1876856

Journal Information:: Nature Climate Change, Journal Name: Nature Climate Change Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 12; ISSN 1758-678X

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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