While the global average number of tropical cyclones each year has not budged from 86 over the last four decades, climate change has been influencing the locations of where these deadly storms occur, according to new NOAA-led research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
New research indicates that the number of tropical cyclones has been rising since 1980 in the North Atlantic and Central Pacific, while storms have been declining in the western Pacific and in the South Indian Ocean.
“We show for the first time that this observed geographic pattern cannot be explained only by natural variability,” said Hiroyuki Murakami, a climate researcher at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and lead author.
Murakami used climate models to determine that greenhouse gases, manmade aerosols including particulate pollution, and volcanic eruptions were influencing where tropical cyclones were hitting.
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