Decreasing Trend of Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Inner-Core Size over the Past Decades

Studies on tropical cyclone (TC) inner-core size have become increasingly active in recent years. However, few studies have investigated the trend of TC inner-core size. Here, we introduce a new index to measure TC inner-core size and calculate the observed trend. This index can greatly reduce the influence of data heterogeneity and uncertainty. It also considers public concern because the new index is mainly determined by the inner-core size of strong TCs, which attract more public attention than weak TCs. The results show that in the past decades, TC inner-core size has a significant downtrend that is significant above the 99% confidence level when the new index is used. We also show that this trend is probably related to the increase in TC intensity and relatively small inner-core size of strong TCs. Moreover, relative sea surface temperature (SST) is assumed to make contributions to the downtrend of TC inner-core size, which has a significant negative correlation with the new index.