Characterizing the Evolution of Tropical Cyclone Thermal Structure: A Tropical Cyclone Thermal Phase Space

Abstract

Current understandings of the tropical cyclone (TC) warm core primarily relies on statistical averages from soundings and satellite products, which provide a climatological thermal state but cannot adequately characterize the continuous three-dimensional evolution of the warm core throughout the TC life cycle. In this study, Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis was applied to three-dimensional temperature anomalies of Western North Pacific (WNP) TCs derived from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset for the period 1979-2024. We found that the three leading EOF modes effectively capture the primary characteristics of the TC thermal structure: the first mode represents the typical warm core structure; the second mode characterizes vertical baroclinicity; and the third pattern captures the horizontal asymmetry of the temperature anomalies. Using the first three principal components (PCs), we established a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Within this framework, two phase parameters define a thermal phase space to visualize the TC's three-dimensional thermal structure: one diagnoses the vertical barotropic or baroclinic structure, and the other quantifies the horizontal asymmetry of the thermal field. The results demonstrate that the trajectory in the phase diagram effectively captures the observed intensity changes and thermal structural evolution. The EOF-based phase diagrams offer promising insights and provide a novel, objective tool for analyzing and diagnosing structural thermodynamic characteristics and intensity evolution by quantifying key thermal features and their dynamic relationships with TC intensity. This capability thereby holds substantial potential for advancing both theoretical understanding and operational forecasting of TCs.