Detected climatic change in global distribution of tropical cyclones

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Other Authors: Murakami, Hiroyuki (author), Delworth, Thomas L. (author), Cooke, William F. (author), Zhao, Ming (author), Xiang, Baoqiang (author), Hsu, Pang-Chi (author)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1922500117

Owing to the limited length of observed tropical cyclone data and the effects of multidecadal internal variability, it has been a challenge to detect trends in tropical cyclone activity on a global scale. However, there is a distinct spatial pattern of the trends in tropical cyclone frequency of occurrence on a global scale since 1980, with substantial decreases in the southern Indian Ocean and western North Pacific and increases in the North Atlantic and central Pacific. Here, using a suite of high-resolution dynamical model experiments, we show that the observed spatial pattern of trends is very unlikely to be explained entirely by underlying multidecadal internal variability; rather, external forcing such as greenhouse gases, aerosols, and volcanic eruptions likely played an important role. This study demonstrates that a climatic change in terms of the global spatial distribution of tropical cyclones has already emerged in observations and may in part be attributable to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.