Tropical Cyclones as a Critical Phenomenon

TL;DR

This paper explores the idea that tropical cyclones follow a scale-invariant power-law distribution of energies, influenced by basin size, and discusses implications for their physics and effects of global warming.

Contribution

It presents a critical phenomena perspective on tropical cyclones, linking their energy distribution to scale invariance and finite-size effects, offering new insights into their physics.

Findings

Tropical cyclone energies follow a power-law distribution.

Finite basin size imposes an energy cutoff.

Global warming impacts cyclone occurrence patterns.

Abstract

It has been proposed that the number of tropical cyclones as a function of the energy they release is a decreasing power-law function, up to a characteristic energy cutoff determined by the spatial size of the ocean basin in which the storm occurs. This means that no characteristic scale exists for the energy of tropical cyclones, except for the finite-size effects induced by the boundaries of the basins. This has important implications for the physics of tropical cyclones. We discuss up to what point tropical cyclones are related to critical phenomena (in the same way as earthquakes, rainfall, etc.), providing a consistent picture of the energy balance in the system. Moreover, this perspective allows one to visualize more clearly the effects of global warming on tropical-cyclone occurrence.