Abstract 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 250 km 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.
Sawada et al. (Fri,) studied this question.