Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years.
Abstract
Theory and modelling predict that hurricane intensity should increase with increasing global mean temperatures, but work on the detection of trends in hurricane activity has focused mostly on their frequency and shows no trend. Here I define an index of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power, integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show that this index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming. My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and--taking into account an increasing coastal population--a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century.
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There are indications that TC activity and intensification before landfall may be increasing in the Atlantic due to global warming.
“There are indications that TC activity and intensification before landfall may be increasing in the Atlantic due to global warming (Emanuel, 2005(Emanuel, , 2017;;Webster et al., 2005;Elsner et al., 2008).”
From The tropical atlantic observing system (2019) · cites this paper as Emanuel, 2005
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- Authors
- Emanuel, K.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Emanuel, Kerry
- ORCID
- Emanuel, Kerry
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2005-07-31
- Volume
- 436
- Issue
- 7051
- Pages
- 686-688
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2076977109
- Cited by
- 4,013
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 175 · 2025: 200 · 2024: 228 · 2023: 191 · 2022: 221 · 2021: 194 · 2020: 187 · 2019: 188 · 2018: 177 · 2017: 172 · 2016: 158 · 2015: 149 · 2014: 206 · 2013: 188 · 2012: 204
- FWCI
- 120.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Environmental Impact
- Keywords
- tropical cyclones, power dissipation index, tropical sea surface temperature, global warming, storm intensity, hurricane frequency, coastal population growth
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