Computer hardware

Climatology

Biology

Fishery

Cyclone (programming language)

Atlantic hurricane

Tropical cyclone scales

Computer science

Climate model

Geology

Oceanography

Wind speed

Tropical wave

Global warming

Climate change

Geography

Tropical cyclone rainfall forecasting

Environmental science

Tropical cyclogenesis

Meteorology

Atmospheric sciences

Field-programmable gate array

Tropical cyclone

African easterly jet

Tropics

Nature

There is no consensus on whether climate change has yet affected the statistics of tropical cyclones, owing to their large natural variability and the limited period of consistent observations. In addition, projections of future tropical cyclone activity are uncertain, because they often rely on coarse-resolution climate models that parameterize convection and hence have difficulty in directly representing tropical cyclones. Here we used convection-permitting regional climate model simulations to investigate whether and how recent destructive tropical cyclones would change if these events had occurred in pre-industrial and in future climates. We found that, relative to pre-industrial conditions, climate change so far has enhanced the average and extreme rainfall of hurricanes Katrina, Irma and Maria, but did not change tropical cyclone wind-speed intensity. In addition, future anthropogenic warming would robustly increase the wind speed and rainfall of 11 of 13 intense tropical cyclones (of 15 events sampled globally). Additional regional climate model simulations suggest that convective parameterization introduces minimal uncertainty into the sign of projected changes in tropical cyclone intensity and rainfall, which allows us to have confidence in projections from global models with parameterized convection and resolution fine enough to include tropical cyclones. Climate model simulations reveal that recent destructive tropical cyclones would have been equally intense in terms of wind speed but would have produced less rainfall if these events had occurred in pre-industrial climates, and in future climates they would have greater wind speeds and rainfall.

Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events