Recent increases in tropical cyclone rapid intensification events in global offshore regions.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37620321.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-40605-2 and PMC identifier 10449825.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Rapid intensification (RI) is an essential process in the development of strong tropical cyclones and a major challenge in prediction. RI in offshore regions is more threatening to coastal populations and economies. Although much effort has been devoted to studying basin-wide temporal-spatial fluctuations, variations of global RI events in offshore regions remain uncertain. Here, we show that compared with open oceans, where the annual RI counts do not show significant changes, offshore areas within 400 km of the coastline have experienced a significant increase in RI events, with the count tripling from 1980 to 2020. Furthermore, thermodynamic environments present more favorable conditions for this trend, and climate models show that global ocean warming has enhanced such changes. This work yields an important finding that an increasing threat of RI in coastal regions has occurred in the preceding decades, which may continue under a future warming climate.