Model projections of tropical cyclone (TC) activity response to anthropogenic warming in climate models are assessed. Observations, theory, and models, with increasing robustness, indicate rising global TC risk for some metrics that are projected to impact multiple regions. A 2°C anthropogenic global warming is projected to impact TC activity as follows. 1) The most confident TC-related projection is that sea level rise accompanying the warming will lead to higher storm inundation levels, assuming all other factors are unchanged. 2) For TC precipitation rates, there is at least medium-to-high confidence in an increase globally, with a median projected increase of 14%, or close to the rate of tropical water vapor increase with warming, at constant relative humidity. 3) For TC intensity, 10 of 11 authors had at least medium-to-high confidence that the global average will increase. The median projected increase in lifetime maximum surface wind speeds is about 5% (range: 1%–10%) in available higher-resolution studies. 4) For the global proportion (as opposed to frequency) of TCs that reach very intense (category 4–5) levels, there is at least medium-to-high confidence in an increase, with a median projected change of +13%. Author opinion was more mixed and confidence levels lower for the following projections: 5) a further poleward expansion of the latitude of maximum TC intensity in the western North Pacific; 6) a decrease of global TC frequency, as projected in most studies; 7) an increase in global very intense TC frequency (category 4–5), seen most prominently in higher-resolution models; and 8) a slowdown in TC translation speed.

Responses of tropical cyclones (TCs) to CO 2 doubling are explored using coupled global climate models (GCMs) with increasingly refined atmospheric/land horizontal grids (~ 200 km, ~ 50 km and ~ 25 km). The three models exhibit similar changes in background climate fields thought to regulate TC activity, such as relative sea surface temperature (SST), potential intensity, and wind shear. However, global TC frequency decreases substantially in the 50 km model, while the 25 km model shows no significant change. The ~ 25 km model also has a substantial and spatially-ubiquitous increase of Category 3-4-5 hurricanes. Idealized perturbation experiments are performed to understand the TC response. Each model's transient fullycoupled 2 × CO 2 TC activity response is largely recovered by "time-slice" experiments using time-invariant SST perturbations added to each model's own SST climatology. The TC response to SST forcing depends on each model's background climatological SST biases: removing these biases leads to a global TC intensity increase in the ~ 50 km model, and a global TC frequency increase in the ~ 25 km model, in response to CO 2 -induced warming patterns and CO 2 doubling. Isolated CO 2 doubling leads to a significant TC frequency decrease, while isolated uniform SST warming leads to a significant global TC frequency increase; the ~ 25 km model has a greater tendency for frequency increase. Global TC frequency responds to both (1) changes in TC "seeds", which increase due to warming (more so in the ~ 25 km model) and decrease due to higher CO 2 concentrations, and (2) less efficient development of these"seeds" into TCs, largely due to the nonlinear relation between temperature and saturation specific humidity.

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The configuration and performance of a new global atmosphere and land model for climate research developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) are presented. The atmosphere model, known as AM2, includes a new gridpoint dynamical core, a prognostic cloud scheme, and a multispecies aerosol climatology, as well as components from previous models used at GFDL. The land model, known as LM2, includes soil sensible and latent heat storage, groundwater storage, and stomatal resistance. The performance of the coupled model AM2–LM2 is evaluated with a series of prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) simulations. Particular focus is given to the model's climatology and the characteristics of interannual variability related to E1 Niño– Southern Oscillation (ENSO). One AM2–LM2 integration was performed according to the prescriptions of the second Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP II) and data were submitted to the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI). Particular strengths of AM2–LM2, as judged by comparison to other models participating in AMIP II, include its circulation and distributions of precipitation. Prominent problems of AM2– LM2 include a cold bias to surface and tropospheric temperatures, weak tropical cyclone activity, and weak tropical intraseasonal activity associated with the Madden–Julian oscillation. An ensemble of 10 AM2–LM2 integrations with observed SSTs for the second half of the twentieth century permits a statistically reliable assessment of the model's response to ENSO. In general, AM2–LM2 produces a realistic simulation of the anomalies in tropical precipitation and extratropical circulation that are associated with ENSO.