Abstract Recent increases in Atlantic basin tropical cyclone activity since 1995 and the associated destructive U.S. landfall events in 2004 and 2005 have generated considerable interest into why there has been such a sharp upturn. Natural variability, human-induced global warming, or a combination of both factors, have been suggested. Several previous studies have discussed observed multidecadal variability in the North Atlantic over 25–40-yr time scales. This study, using data from 1878 to the present, creates a metric based on far North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies and basinwide North Atlantic sea level pressure anomalies that shows remarkable agreement with observed multidecadal variability in both Atlantic basin tropical cyclone activity and in U.S. landfall frequency.