Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates

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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Copyright 2019 Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.


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Author Bhatia, K. T.
Vecchi, G. A.
Knutson, T. R.
Murakami, Hiroyuki
Kossin, J.
Dixon, K. W.
Whitlock, C. E.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2019-02-07T00:00:00
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-11T19:31:11.380481
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:22323
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Bhatia, K. T., Vecchi, G. A., Knutson, T. R., Murakami, Hiroyuki, Kossin, J., Dixon, K. W., Whitlock, C. E.. (2019). Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7xw4ntm. Accessed 06 August 2025.

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