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Poleward migration of tropical cyclones over 1980–2024 is dominated by Pacific variability

Nature Geoscience volume 19, pages 42–51 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Since 1980, tropical cyclones have migrated poleward, but it remains unclear whether this trend reflects long-term climate change or temporary climate variability. Here we investigate the drivers of this poleward migration using multiple observational datasets and global models that permit tropical cyclones. We show that a tripolar pattern of Pacific sea surface temperature variability strongly modulates the interannual variation of cyclone latitudes and largely drove the poleward migration over 1980–2024. The tripolar pattern influences tropical cyclones more effectively than either the El Niño/Southern Oscillation or the Hadley circulation. When its effects are removed, poleward migration is negligible. When it shows negative trends, the model simulates equatorward migration. As the pattern exhibits alternating multi-decadal trends but no long-term trend since 1970, its recent trend—and the associated poleward migration—is unlikely to persist. In ensemble projections under a warming scenario, tropical cyclone activity decreases overall, leading to fewer occurrences at high latitudes despite the poleward expansion of the Hadley cell. These results indicate that climate variability has played a dominant role in the observed poleward migration of tropical cyclones, and that future changes may differ markedly from the recent multi-decadal trends.

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Fig. 1: Effects of TPI on the interannual variation and multi-decadal trend in TC latitudes.
Fig. 2: Multi-decadal migration of TCs in the long historical, TC-permitting simulation.
Fig. 3: Mechanisms of interannual and multi-decadal control of TPI on large-scale environment and TC latitudes.
Fig. 4: Responses to long-term climate change projected by global TC-permitting models.

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Data availability

The IBTrACS dataset is available from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information website at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/international-best-track-archive. The ADT-HURSAT dataset is available from the supporting information of Kossin et al.54 at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920849117. The large-ensemble historical simulation outputs are available from the CMIP6 data archive at https://aims2.llnl.gov/search, except for GFDL-SPEAR, which is available from GFDL at https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/spear_large_ensembles/. The ERA5 reanalyses outputs are available from the Copernicus Climate Data Store at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/reanalysis-era5-pressure-levels-monthly-means?tab=overview. The ERSST dataset is available from NOAA-PSL at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v5.html. The TC track data of MRI-60km in the d4PDF project are available from the MRI Research Data Server at https://climate.mri-jma.go.jp/pub/d4pdf/tropical_cyclone_tracks/. The TC track data of HiRAM-20km and MRI-20km are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17252792 (ref. 67).

Code availability

The model code of GFDL-AM4c192 is available from the GFDL data portal at http://data1.gfdl.noaa.gov/nomads/forms/am4.0/. The scripts for extracting latitudes of TC genesis and LMI from TC tracks and the code for computing Hadley cell metrics are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17252792 (ref. 67).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research as part of the Regional and Global Model Analysis program area through the Water Cycle: Modeling of Circulation, Convection, and Earth System Mechanisms (WACCEM) scientific focus area. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is operated for the US Department of Energy by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. J.L. was also supported by the start-up projects at Ocean University of China: 3001000-862401013230 and 3001000-862505020010. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model outputs. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH1123. We also acknowledge the data access and computing support provided by the NCAR CMIP Analysis Platform (https://doi.org/10.5065/D60R9MSP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Wenyu Zhou, L. Ruby Leung, Chuan-Chieh Chang & Karthik Balaguru

  2. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Ming Zhao

  3. Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Huang-Hsiung Hsu, Hsin-Chien Liang & Chia-Ying Tu

  4. Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Jian Lu

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Contributions

W.Z. conceived the study, conducted the analyses and wrote the paper. L.R.L., M.Z., C.-C.C., K.B. and J.L. contributed to the development of the idea and interpretation of the results. C.-C.C. processed the d4pdf data. M.Z. conducted the GFDL-AM4c192 simulations. H.-H.H., H.-C.L. and C.-Y.T. conducted the HiRAM-20km and MRI-20km simulations. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wenyu Zhou.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Dazhi Xi, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Aliénor Lavergne, Tom Richardson and James Super, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Zhou, W., Leung, L.R., Chang, CC. et al. Poleward migration of tropical cyclones over 1980–2024 is dominated by Pacific variability. Nat. Geosci. 19, 42–51 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01866-2

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