Recent Tropical Cyclone Outer Size Increases in the Western North Atlantic

The outer size of a tropical cyclone (TC) plays a pivotal role in its impact through a modulation of wind duration, rainfall extent and storm surge. While global and basin scale trends in TC size have been examined previously, whether there have been regional changes over time remains unclear. Here, using a suite of observations and reanalyses, we detect an increasing TC outer size over the western North Atlantic during 1979–2022. Over the western subtropical North Atlantic where the largest changes are found, the area‐averaged increase in the radius of 17 ms−1 ${\text{ms}}^{-1}$ winds is about 7.5% over this period. Analysis of the large‐scale environment reveals that the air‐sea thermodynamic state has become more favorable for storm intensification, and thereby expansion, over that region. Further, numerical model simulations link changes in the environment with those in storm size, and suggest a combination of natural variability and external forcing in driving them.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Earth's Future

• Publication date

  2026-02-01

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1029/2025EF007162
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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