A common warming-dependent decline emerges from divergent projections of tropical cyclone frequency

Abstract

How global tropical cyclone frequency will respond to climate warming remains uncertain, with projections spanning both increases and decreases. Here we use an environment-dependent probabilistic tropical cyclone model driven by 14 CMIP6 models under intermediate- and high-emissions scenarios to identify a common response across these divergent projections. Initially weak global changes evolve into a clearer late-century decline, driven by increasingly negative changes in the Southern Hemisphere and diminishing positive changes in the Northern Hemisphere. The long-term decline is stronger under higher emissions. Counterfactual decomposition shows that this stronger decline cannot be explained by the sum of the individual predictor contributions, which largely offset one another, but is instead dominated by negative non-additive joint effects among absolute vorticity, vertical wind shear, relative humidity and potential intensity. Across 28 model-scenario projections, the global tropical cyclone frequency trend scales linearly with the level of global warming. Applying the fitted warming-frequency relationship at 2 degree C of warming relative to 1980-2014 narrows the 95% confidence interval for the projected frequency change from [-21.9%, +10.3%] to [-9.1%, -2.5%]. These results reconcile divergent projections through a common warming-dependent decline and identify the joint reorganization of large-scale environmental conditions as its primary driver.

arXiv commentRevised in response to reviewer comments. Submitted to Nature Geoscience