The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated the global water cycle is accelerating and may have an impact on the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones (TCs). To protect life and property, it is important to identify how TC structure and intensity may respond to post-landfall conditions. Anomalously high soil moisture enhances surface latent heat flux (LHF) and has been theorized to provide energy to landfalling TCs. TCs can maintain or increase strength over inland regions (TCMIs) where they would otherwise be expected to dissipate or transition to extratropical cyclones (ETs). This framework has been termed the brown ocean effect because moisture from the ocean is normally the primary source for the energetics driving tropical systems. The first objective of this research is to create a global climatology of post-landfall TC intensifications. Landfalling tropical systems 1979-2008 are identified and filtered by those that intensify inland (i.e., pressure drop or wind speed increase). Low-level thermal wind measurements, satellite images, and hurricane databases are used to interpret the post-landfall structure of each TC that intensifies inland: warm-core (TCMI), cold-core (ET), or hybrid. The second objective is to use HYDRUS-1D to model typical surface fluxes of an intensification region. A comparison of land flux versus ocean flux provides an assessment of the feasibility that soil moisture can act as a substitute for the ocean. The third objective is to use a numerical weather model to simulate a historical TCMI case under various soil moisture regimes. This test of the brown ocean determines the relative role of soil moisture in TC evolution. Results reveal 16 TCMI cases globally over the study period. The LHF over land leading up to intensification has a comparable magnitude to that over the ocean. Findings from objectives 1 and 2 suggest that antecedent precipitation, soil moisture, evaporation, and LHF could be important to the maintenance of warm-core TCs when baroclinicity is weak (i.e., lack of temperature gradients). WRF simulations from objective 3 indicate that TC structure is influenced by soil moisture conditions. A dry soil regime reduces LHF, low-level moisture, and total precipitation, and weakens cyclone rotation.