<p>Tropical cyclones can cause severe damage to coastal communities and the marine industry. However, trends in their intensity remain uncertain due to observational challenges, especially for the more frequent weak tropical cyclones, defined as tropical storms to category-1 tropical cyclones on the Saffir–Simpson scale. Here we develop an inversion model using surface drifter observations to estimate sea-surface wind speed, aiming to reassess the long-term global trend in the intensity of weak tropical cyclones from 1993 to 2022. Our results indicate that the global intensification of weak tropical cyclones has been insignificant, with only a modest upward trend of about 3.4 cm s⁻¹ decade⁻¹. Furthermore, we found that weak tropical cyclones have intensified only in the Southern Hemisphere, rather than across all ocean basins. The present work suggests that global warming is probably having only a limited impact on the evolution of weak tropical cyclones.</p>