What is it about?
Tropical cyclones cool the ocean beneath them as strong winds mix colder subsurface water toward the surface. We show that submesoscale (~1-10 km) horizontal sea surface temperature gradients can strongly influence this cooling. Strong temperature gradients enhance cooling, while weak gradients reduce it, allowing the ocean to stay warmer and favoring stronger tropical cyclones.
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Why is it important?
Most previous studies have focused on the vertical temperature structure of the upper ocean, such as mixed layer depth and upper-ocean heat content, when assessing how the ocean affects tropical cyclone intensity. Our results show that horizontal temperature structure also matters. Weak prestorm temperature gradients are associated with stronger storms, favor rapid intensification and higher landfall intensity. These results suggest that prestorm sea surface temperature gradients could provide useful additional information for tropical cyclone prediction.
Perspectives
What interested me most in this study was that a relatively small-scale feature of the ocean could have such a clear influence on tropical cyclone. This work has made me think more broadly about the role of submesoscale processes in air–sea interaction, and I hope to further explore how these processes affect vertical mixing, heat transport, and tropical cyclone evolution.
Hanrui Liu
Ocean University of China
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Weak prestorm submesoscale sea surface temperature gradients conducive to tropical cyclone intensification, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2603330123.
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