Rapid intensification restructures the upper tail of tropical-cyclone storm surge extremes

초록

Rapid intensification (RI) of tropical cyclones (TCs) has emerged as a critical challenge for coastal risk assessment, yet its influence on storm surge extremes remains insufficiently quantified. This study investigates how RI, whether a storm experienced RI at any point during its lifetime, modifies storm surge risk across major ocean basins using TC best-track data and tide-gauge–based surge reconstructions spanning 45° S–45° N during 1980–2020. Results show that RI-related surge amplification is concentrated in the upper tail of the surge distribution. While global median differences between RI and non-RI storms are modest (≈0.017 m), divergence increases markedly at extreme return levels. RI storms generate approximately 25% higher 100 year surge levels, with exceedance risk ratios approaching five at high surge thresholds. Basin-scale analysis reveals pronounced amplification in the North Atlantic and Western Pacific, whereas other basins exhibit weaker or inconsistent separation. Lastly, our results indicate that surge generation in RI storms depends on multiple structural attributes rather than peak wind speed alone. The coordinated pre-landfall evolution of these features produces storm configurations that are dynamically more surge-efficient. These findings suggest that RI constitutes a distinct surge-amplifying regime and that conventional surge assessments that pool storms without regard to intensification pathway may underestimate extreme coastal water levels. Incorporating RI frequency, storm structural evolution, and basin-specific morphology is therefore required for improving surge forecasting modeling and climate-resilient coastal design. © 2026 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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