Tropical cyclone activity in the western Pacific since the mid-Holocene exhibits a symmetrical pattern between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres

Tropical cyclones severely threaten human lives and property in affected regions, and exploring their past spatiotemporal variations is essential for risk assessment and disaster prevention. Here, we use storm-relocated coral blocks from Hainan Island as a proxy to reconstruct Holocene tropical cyclone activity in the northern South China Sea. High-precision U-Th dating of 40 samples reveals two major active periods (7.3–5.8 ka and 2.2–0 ka), which correspond to relatively cold periods. Comparison with western Pacific paleo-cyclone records reveals that the spatiotemporal pattern of tropical cyclone activity exhibits an inter-hemispheric symmetrical pattern between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, probably reflecting shifts in tropical cyclone tracks in response to the expansion or contraction of the western Pacific warm pool and/or the Intertropical Convergence Zone since the mid-Holocene. Future warming may reduce low‑latitude tropical cyclone landfalls near Hainan but enhance tropical cyclone activity at mid‑to‑high latitudes. Tropical cyclone activity showed hemispheric-symmetric spatiotemporal patterns in the western Pacific since the mid-Holocene, as revealed by analysis based on storm-relocated coral blocks and other paleo-cyclone records.