A potential explanation for the global increase in tropical cyclone rapid intensification.

Tropical cyclone rapid intensification events often cause destructive hurricane landfalls because they are associated with the strongest storms and forecasts with the highest errors. Multi-decade observational datasets of tropical cyclone behavior have recently enabled documentation of upward trends in tropical cyclone rapid intensification in several basins. However, a robust anthropogenic signal in global intensification trends and the physical drivers of intensification trends have yet to be identified. To address these knowledge gaps, here we compare the observed trends in intensification and tropical cyclone environmental parameters to simulated natural variability in a high-resolution global climate model. In multiple basins and the global dataset, we detect a significant increase in intensification rates with a positive contribution from anthropogenic forcing. Furthermore, thermodynamic environments around tropical cyclones have become more favorable for intensification, and climate models show anthropogenic warming has significantly increased the probability of these changes.

Author Correction: Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Author Correction: Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates.

The original version of this Article contained an error in the second sentence of the first paragraph of the 'Quantile mapping' section of the Methods, which incorrectly read 'We primarily focus on results produced using an additive version of QDM26 by making use of R programming language code contained in the CRAN MBC package version 0.10-438.' The correct version states 'QDM29' in place of 'QDM26'. Also, the third sentence of the first paragraph of the 'Quantile mapping' section of the Methods originally incorrectly read 'As reported in Appendix A of Cannon et al.26 the additive version of QDM is functionally very similar to the equidistant CDF matching algorithm of Li et al.39.' The correct version states 'Cannon et al.29' in place of 'Cannon et al.26'. This has been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

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.