Original title: A common warming-dependent decline emerges from divergent projections of tropical cyclone frequency
Cong Gao, Ning Lin · September 2026
Scientists want to know if climate change will cause more or fewer tropical cyclones, such as hurricanes. Past models disagreed, showing both increases and drops. To find out, researchers tested an environment-dependent probabilistic tropical cyclone model using fourteen climate models under intermediate- and high-emissions scenarios. The model works by tracking how ocean and storm conditions interact. Early on, global changes are weak. But by late century, a clearer drop in cyclones appears. A growing decline in the Southern Hemisphere and a fading increase in the Northern Hemisphere drive this drop, which gets stronger under higher emissions. Environmental factors fight each other individually, but they interact in negative ways that reduce storm numbers. Overall, cyclone counts decline steadily as the world warms.
Imagine you are making a soup. Each ingredient alone has a mild flavor, and some even seem to cancel each other out. But when you simmer them together, a new, clear taste emerges that none of the individual ingredients predicted. In this paper, many environmental factors like wind and humidity each contribute weakly and often in opposite directions, but their combined interaction leads to a consistent decline in cyclone numbers as the climate warms.
For decades, climate models disagreed on whether global warming would increase or decrease the number of tropical cyclones each year. This study shows that at 2°C of warming, the number of cyclones almost certainly declines by 2 to 8%, reconciling earlier disagreements. That matters for coastal planning, insurance risk models, and how we prepare for future storms.
This study focuses solely on tropical cyclone frequency, not on intensity, rainfall, or storm tracks, which may respond differently. The probabilistic model is simpler than high-resolution dynamical simulations and may miss small-scale processes. Projections are based on 14 CMIP6 models under two emissions scenarios, so other models or scenarios could give different results.
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A common warming-dependent decline emerges from divergent projections of tropical cyclone frequency — Cong Gao, Ning Lin
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.