Climate Change and Storm Intensity Trends

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2021, concluded with medium confidence that the global proportion of tropical cyclones reaching the strongest categories, Category 3 and above on the Saffir-Simpson scale, has likely increased over the past four decades, and it projected with somewhat greater confidence that the average peak wind speeds and rainfall rates of the most intense storms will continue to increase as the climate warms further, even while it stopped short of concluding confidently that the total annual number of tropical cyclones worldwide is increasing, and some model projections instead suggest a modest decrease in overall storm counts even as the strongest storms grow stronger.