Joint Influence of Supportive and Unsupportive Environmental Conditions on Tropical Cyclone Rapid Intensification in Two HighResMIP Simulations

Abstract Tropical cyclone (TC) rapid intensification (RI) is driven by complex interactions of TCs with multiple environmental factors. Using observations and two HighResMIP models (CNRM‐CM6‐1‐HR and HadGEM3‐GC31‐HM) that better simulate TCRI, we examine how six environmental factors jointly influence TCRI. Observations show that while TCRI occurrence probability increases with the number of supportive conditions, it is strongly suppressed when even a few unsupportive ones are present. For the same number of supportive conditions, the number of unsupportive conditions largely controls the TCRI occurrence. In the models, the sensitivity of TCRI occurrence frequency to the number of supportive and unsupportive conditions is found to be weaker than the observed, caused by unrealistic representation of the effect of vertical wind shear and low free‐troposphere humidity on TCRI. Our results emphasize that unsupportive environmental conditions must be explicitly considered alongside supportive ones when diagnosing and predicting RI.