Fig. 5: Variations of subtropical highs and spatial distributions of landfalling track modes since global satellite era (1980–2019/20).

Variations of subtropical highs are depicted by the 1520 geopotential height line (dash) at 850 hPa over the eastern North Pacific and North Atlantic, and by the 1490 (solid) and 1520 (dash) geopotential height lines at 850 hPa over the western North Pacific, with 40-yr mean wind vectors (July–October during 1980–2019) overlaid. Each marker represents the centroid position (the mean of tropical cyclone positions at four synoptic times past landfall) of an event in a particular landfalling track mode (specified in bottom panel; see Methods) with landfall intensity ≥64 kt, with its size proportional to the corresponding τ.