scholarly journals Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Kossin
2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 652-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yung Y. Chao ◽  
Jose-Henrique G. M. Alves ◽  
Hendrik L. Tolman

Abstract A new wind–wave prediction model, referred to as the North Atlantic hurricane (NAH) wave model, has been developed at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) to produce forecasts of hurricane-generated waves during the Atlantic hurricane season. A detailed description of this model and a comparison of its performance against the operational western North Atlantic (WNA) wave model during Hurricanes Isidore and Lili, in 2002, are presented. The NAH and WNA models are identical in their physics and numerics. The NAH model uses a wind field obtained by blending data from NCEP’s operational Global Forecast System (GFS) with those from a higher-resolution hurricane prediction model, whereas the WNA wave model uses winds provided exclusively by the GFS. Relative biases of the order of 10% in the prediction of maximum wave heights up to 48 h in advance, indicate that the use of higher-resolution winds in the NAH model provides a successful framework for predicting extreme sea states generated by a hurricane. Consequently, the NAH model has been made operational at NCEP for use during the Atlantic hurricane season.


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (24) ◽  
pp. 5370-5381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lian Xie ◽  
Tingzhuang Yan ◽  
Leonard J. Pietrafesa ◽  
John M. Morrison ◽  
Thomas Karl

Abstract The spatial and temporal variability of North Atlantic hurricane tracks and its possible association with the annual hurricane landfall frequency along the U.S. East Coast are studied using principal component analysis (PCA) of hurricane track density function (HTDF). The results show that, in addition to the well-documented effects of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and vertical wind shear (VWS), North Atlantic HTDF is strongly modulated by the dipole mode (DM) of Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) as well as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO). Specifically, it was found that Atlantic SST DM is the only index that is associated with all top three empirical orthogonal function (EOF) modes of the Atlantic HTDF. ENSO and tropical Atlantic VWS are significantly correlated with the first and the third EOF of the HTDF over the North Atlantic Ocean. The second EOF of North Atlantic HTDF, which represents the “zonal gradient” of North Atlantic hurricane track density, showed no significant correlation with ENSO or with tropical Atlantic VWS. Instead, it is associated with the Atlantic SST DM, and extratropical processes including NAO and AO. Since for a given hurricane season, the preferred hurricane track pattern, together with the overall basinwide hurricane activity, collectively determines the hurricane landfall frequency, the results provide a foundation for the construction of a statistical model that projects the annual number of hurricanes striking the eastern seaboard of the United States.


1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Macbeth

Just after dawn, an English couple in their 30's haul up their anchor and motor across the stillness of Suva harbour. The hurricane season is approaching and they are embarking on the 2–3 week trip to Bay of Islands New Zealand for the southern summer. Three months earlier, as their yacht lay aground on the fringing reef of uninhabited Suvarov atoll, they wondered if they'd ever reach New Zealand. But, with the help of other cruisers and lucky tides their steel 36 footer was clear and safe in under 24 hours. What was to be a one year trip around the north Atlantic was now happily way off course in the South Pacific and likely to remain so for some time. That is just a glimpse of one small aspect of ocean cruising, the subculture of interest here. However, throughout the paper the ethnography of cruising is developed further. A model is proposed to show how individuals come to share the subculture ideology and then to participate in the lifestyle. Subsequently, 1 will place ocean cruising in the context of subculture theory by expanding the ethnography and relating cruising to other subcultures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 144 (3) ◽  
pp. 877-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iam-Fei Pun ◽  
James F. Price ◽  
Steven R. Jayne

Abstract This paper describes a new model (method) called Satellite-derived North Atlantic Profiles (SNAP) that seeks to provide a high-resolution, near-real-time ocean thermal field to aid tropical cyclone (TC) forecasting. Using about 139 000 observed temperature profiles, a spatially dependent regression model is developed for the North Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season. A new step introduced in this work is that the daily mixed layer depth is derived from the output of a one-dimensional Price–Weller–Pinkel ocean mixed layer model with time-dependent surface forcing. The accuracy of SNAP is assessed by comparison to 19 076 independent Argo profiles from the hurricane seasons of 2011 and 2013. The rms differences of the SNAP-estimated isotherm depths are found to be 10–25 m for upper thermocline isotherms (29°–19°C), 35–55 m for middle isotherms (18°–7°C), and 60–100 m for lower isotherms (6°–4°C). The primary error sources include uncertainty of sea surface height anomaly (SSHA), high-frequency fluctuations of isotherm depths, salinity effects, and the barotropic component of SSHA. These account for roughly 29%, 25%, 19%, and 10% of the estimation error, respectively. The rms differences of TC-related ocean parameters, upper-ocean heat content, and averaged temperature of the upper 100 m, are ~10 kJ cm−2 and ~0.8°C, respectively, over the North Atlantic basin. These errors are typical also of the open ocean underlying the majority of TC tracks. Errors are somewhat larger over regions of greatest mesoscale variability (i.e., the Gulf Stream and the Loop Current within the Gulf of Mexico).


2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1543-1567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yung Y. Chao ◽  
Hendrik L. Tolman

Abstract Unprecedented numbers of tropical cyclones occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the performance of two operational regional wave forecasting models at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). This study validates model predictions of the tropical cyclone–generated maximum significant wave height, simultaneous spectral peak wave period, and the time of occurrence against available buoy measurements from the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). The models used are third-generation operational wave models: the Western North Atlantic wave model (WNA) and the North Atlantic Hurricane wave model (NAH). These two models have identical model physics, spatial resolutions, and domains, with the latter model using specialized hurricane wind forcing. Both models provided consistent estimates of the maximum wave height and period, with random errors of typically less than 25%, and timing errors of typically less than 5 h. Compared to these random errors, systematic model biases are negligible, with a typical negative model bias of 5%. It appears that higher wave model resolutions are needed to fully utilize the specialized hurricane wind forcing, and it is shown that present routine wave observations are inadequate to accurately validate hurricane wave models.


2010 ◽  
Vol 138 (10) ◽  
pp. 3858-3868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Zhao ◽  
Isaac M. Held ◽  
Gabriel A. Vecchi

Abstract Retrospective predictions of seasonal hurricane activity in the Atlantic and east Pacific are generated using an atmospheric model with 50-km horizontal resolution by simply persisting sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies from June through the hurricane season. Using an ensemble of 5 realizations for each year between 1982 and 2008, the correlations of the model mean predictions with observations of basin-wide hurricane frequency are 0.69 in the North Atlantic and 0.58 in the east Pacific. In the North Atlantic, a significant part of the degradation in skill as compared to a model forced with observed SSTs during the hurricane season (correlation of 0.78) can be explained by the change from June through the hurricane season in one parameter, the difference between the SST in the main development region and the tropical mean SST. In fact, simple linear regression models with this one predictor perform nearly as well as the full dynamical model for basin-wide hurricane frequency in both the east Pacific and the North Atlantic. The implication is that the quality of seasonal forecasts based on a coupled atmosphere–ocean model will depend in large part on the model’s ability to predict the evolution of this difference between main development region SST and tropical mean SST.


1892 ◽  
Vol 34 (872supp) ◽  
pp. 13940-13941
Author(s):  
Richard Beynon

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