Although the chaotic nature of the atmosphere may enable efficient control of tropical cyclones (TCs) via small-scale perturbations, few studies have proposed data-driven optimization methods to identify such perturbations. Here, we apply the recently proposed Ensemble Kalman Control (EnKC) to a TC simulation. We show that EnKC finds small-scale perturbations that mitigate TC. An EnKC-estimated reduction in surface water vapor, located approximately 250km from the TC center, suppresses convective activity and latent heat release in the eye wall, leading to a reduction of TC intensity. To advance the discovery of feasible TC mitigation strategies, we discuss the potential of this data-driven method for leveraging chaos, as well as its remaining challenges.
@article{arxiv.2510.25447,
title = {Data-driven Exploration of Tropical Cyclone's Controllability},
author = {Yohei Sawada and Masashi Minamide and Yuyue Yan and Kazumune Hashimoto and Le Duc},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.25447},
year = {2025}
}