Fewer tropical cyclones yield more near-inertial wind work to the global ocean over the past four decades

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Ma, Yonggui, Shu, Yeqiang, Wang, Dongxiao, Hu, Zhan, Li, Mingting, Song, Wei
• Other Authors: Basic Frontiers and Innovative Development 2023 ”Integration” Project of South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: IOP Publishing 2024
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad5854; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad5854; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad5854/pdf

Abstract In general, tropical cyclones (TCs) will inject energy into oceanic inertial motion‒a prevalent phenomenon in the ocean. Under global warming, the intensity of TCs is on the rise, while their frequency has exhibited a decline since 2000. However, the long-term trend of this energy infusion is an underexplored problem in this context. Using a damped-slab model, we computed the wind work exerted by TCs on the ocean’s mixed-layer inertial motions. Our results show that the global wind work has increased by approximately 50% from 1979 to 2023. The wind work increase of strong TCs (Saffir–Simpson levels 4–5) is the major contributor to the increasing trend of global wind work, primarily due to their increasing frequency and substantial wind stress. At basin scale, the wind work input of the North Atlantic TCs has increased by 2 times, owing to an increase in both their intensity and frequency. Specifically, in the South Indian and the eastern North Pacific basins, the rise in wind work is primarily attributed to the enhanced wind energy of TCs within the inertial bands.