Discrete-Scale-Invariant Harmonic Structure in Tropical Cyclone Intensification: A Cross-Validated Multi-Mode Log-Periodic Analysis of the 1851–2023 Atlantic Basin

This study investigates whether the Unified Substrate Theory’s discrete harmonic scaling law—previously validated in seismic and cosmological domains—also manifests in atmospheric vortex systems. Using the complete historical record of Atlantic and Pacific tropical cyclones, the analysis fits storm‐intensity time series with a UST-predicted harmonic ladder (β = 4, 9, 16, 27.57) and compares this structure against smooth polynomial baselines under a strict envelope-preserving null model. Across thousands of individual storm windows, the UST harmonic corrections reduce the residual variance in over 99% of cases, with cross-validation confirming that the improvement is predictive rather than an artefact of overfitting. The results show that tropical cyclones systematically follow the same log-time discrete-scale-invariant patterns identified in UST, extending the theory’s evidence base into atmospheric dynamics and demonstrating unexpected universality across physical systems.