TY - JOUR
T1 - Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates
AU - Bhatia, Kieran T.
AU - Vecchi, Gabriel Andres
AU - Knutson, Thomas R.
AU - Murakami, Hiroyuki
AU - Kossin, James
AU - Dixon, Keith W.
AU - Whitlock, Carolyn E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Dr. Benjamin Bronselaer and Dr. Nathaniel Johnson for their suggestions and comments during the internal review process. The authors also would like to acknowledge Youngrak Cho for his edits to multiple figures. Kieran Bhatia and Gabriel Vecchi were supported by National Science Foundation under Grant AGS-1262099 and in part by the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University BP International 02085(7).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify are typically associated with the highest forecast errors and cause a disproportionate amount of human and financial losses. Therefore, it is crucial to understand if, and why, there are observed upward trends in tropical cyclone intensification rates. Here, we utilize two observational datasets to calculate 24-hour wind speed changes over the period 1982–2009. We compare the observed trends to natural variability in bias-corrected, high-resolution, global coupled model experiments that accurately simulate the climatological distribution of tropical cyclone intensification. Both observed datasets show significant increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates in the Atlantic basin that are highly unusual compared to model-based estimates of internal climate variations. Our results suggest a detectable increase of Atlantic intensification rates with a positive contribution from anthropogenic forcing and reveal a need for more reliable data before detecting a robust trend at the global scale.
AB - Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify are typically associated with the highest forecast errors and cause a disproportionate amount of human and financial losses. Therefore, it is crucial to understand if, and why, there are observed upward trends in tropical cyclone intensification rates. Here, we utilize two observational datasets to calculate 24-hour wind speed changes over the period 1982–2009. We compare the observed trends to natural variability in bias-corrected, high-resolution, global coupled model experiments that accurately simulate the climatological distribution of tropical cyclone intensification. Both observed datasets show significant increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates in the Atlantic basin that are highly unusual compared to model-based estimates of internal climate variations. Our results suggest a detectable increase of Atlantic intensification rates with a positive contribution from anthropogenic forcing and reveal a need for more reliable data before detecting a robust trend at the global scale.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-019-08471-z
DO - 10.1038/s41467-019-08471-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 30733439
AN - SCOPUS:85061250179
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 10
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 635
ER -