Recent migration of tropical cyclones toward coasts

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 371 (6528) ◽  
pp. 514-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuai Wang ◽  
Ralf Toumi
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Trend Analysis ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Maximum Intensity ◽  
Coastal Regions ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Steering Flow ◽  
Annual Frequency ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Tracks

Poleward migrations of tropical cyclones have been observed globally, but their impact on coastal areas remains unclear. We investigated the change in global tropical cyclone activity in coastal regions over the period 1982–2018. We found that the distance of tropical cyclone maximum intensity to land has decreased by about 30 kilometers per decade, and that the annual frequency of global tropical cyclones increases with proximity to land by about two additional cyclones per decade. Trend analysis reveals a robust migration of tropical cyclone activity toward coasts, concurrent with poleward migration of cyclone locations as well as a statistically significant westward shift. This zonal shift of tropical cyclone tracks may be mainly driven by global zonal changes in environmental steering flow.

scholarly journals Tracking Scheme Dependence of Simulated Tropical Cyclone Response to Idealized Climate Simulations

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (24) ◽  
pp. 9197-9213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Horn ◽  
Kevin Walsh ◽  
Ming Zhao ◽  
Suzana J. Camargo ◽  
Enrico Scoccimarro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
General Circulation Models ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Model Data ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Sensitivity Testing

Abstract Future tropical cyclone activity is a topic of great scientific and societal interest. In the absence of a climate theory of tropical cyclogenesis, general circulation models are the primary tool available for investigating the issue. However, the identification of tropical cyclones in model data at moderate resolution is complex, and numerous schemes have been developed for their detection. The influence of different tracking schemes on detected tropical cyclone activity and responses in the Hurricane Working Group experiments is examined herein. These are idealized atmospheric general circulation model experiments aimed at determining and distinguishing the effects of increased sea surface temperature and other increased CO2 effects on tropical cyclone activity. Two tracking schemes are applied to these data and the tracks provided by each modeling group are analyzed. The results herein indicate moderate agreement between the different tracking methods, with some models and experiments showing better agreement across schemes than others. When comparing responses between experiments, it is found that much of the disagreement between schemes is due to differences in duration, wind speed, and formation-latitude thresholds. After homogenization in these thresholds, agreement between different tracking methods is improved. However, much disagreement remains, accountable for by more fundamental differences between the tracking schemes. The results indicate that sensitivity testing and selection of objective thresholds are the key factors in obtaining meaningful, reproducible results when tracking tropical cyclones in climate model data at these resolutions, but that more fundamental differences between tracking methods can also have a significant impact on the responses in activity detected.

Hurricane “Amanda”: Rediscovery of a Forgotten U.S. Civil War Florida Hurricane

2013 ◽  
Vol 94 (11) ◽  
pp. 1735-1742 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Chenoweth ◽  
C. J. Mock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Major Hurricane ◽  
The U.S ◽  
States History

Among the most unusual and unexpected hurricanes in United States history is the only hurricane to make landfall in the month of May. This recently rediscovered storm that struck northwest Florida on 28 May 1863 created a natural disaster in the area that became lost to history because it was embedded in a much larger and important manmade event—in this case, the U.S. Civil War. The authors document the arrival of this storm both historically and meteorologically and anachronistically name it “Hurricane Amanda” in honor of the Union ship driven ashore by the hurricane. The hurricane revealed deficiencies and strengths in combat readiness by both sides. Meteorologically, the storm nearly achieved major hurricane status at landfall and its absence from modern databases of tropical cyclone activity is a useful reminder to users of important gaps in our knowledge of tropical cyclones even in the best-sampled storm basins.

scholarly journals Quantifying the statistical distribution of Tropical Cyclone Activity in the historical record of the Dominican Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 159-167
Author(s):  
Santo Trinidad Alvarez Ysabel ◽  
Gustavo Adolfo Agredo Cardona ◽  
David Felipe Rincón
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Seasonal Distribution ◽  
Caribbean Basin ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Tracks

 In this study, we re-examined the Official Hurricane Database from the National Hurricane Center (HURDAT-NHC), an agency associated with NOAA, for tropical cyclone activity from 1851 to 2012for the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Basin.  We performed analyses at two different levels for the island (i.e., all of the storm tracks in the Caribbean Basin near to the study area that made landfall and all of the events that crossed the Dominican Republic from a radius of 300 km from the coastline). This study includes the statistical occurrence of these phenomena during the study period and the climatological analysis of all tropical cyclone tracks (112 total events) by decadal seasonal distribution, fifty-year seasonal distribution and monthly seasonal distribution to show the lowest and highest activities. We performed wavelet analysis on the continuous data over a long time series to determine the important frequencies. This analysis provided a general statistical conclusion resulting from the data collected. A landfall probability for the study area corresponding to the long time series of (it’s 162) years within a radius of ~100, ~185 and ~300 km, based on the historical climatology tropical cyclone tracks, reveals the likelihood of a strike for a major or a minor hurricane. We present a review of the tropical cyclone activities that passed the Dominican Republic, which also forms part of the author’s dissertation. 

Passage of Tropical Storm Allison (2001) over southeast Texas recorded in δ18O values of Ostracoda

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Lawrence ◽  
Kiseong Hyeong ◽  
Rosalie F. Maddocks ◽  
Kwang-Sik Lee
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Oxygen Isotope ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Tropical Storm ◽  
Low Oxygen ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Southeast Texas

AbstractFreshwater Ostracoda collected in ephemeral pond-waters derived from Tropical Storm Allison (2001, Texas) recorded the unusually low oxygen-isotope values of that storm. Therefore, the potential clearly exists, in locations where tropical cyclones make landfall, to obtain a long-term record of tropical cyclone activity from fossil ostracode calcite.

scholarly journals West African Storm Tracks and Their Relationship to Atlantic Tropical Cyclones

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 2468-2483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna B. Hopsch ◽  
Chris D. Thorncroft ◽  
Kevin Hodges ◽  
Anantha Aiyyer
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
Storm Track ◽  
Meridional Wind ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
West African ◽  
Storm Tracks ◽  
Tropical Atlantic ◽  
Cyclone Activity

Abstract The automatic tracking technique used by Thorncroft and Hodges has been used to identify coherent vorticity structures at 850 hPa over West Africa and the tropical Atlantic in the 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis. The presence of two dominant source regions, north and south of 15°N over West Africa, for storm tracks over the Atlantic was confirmed. Results show that the southern storm track provides most of the storms that reach the main development region where most tropical cyclones develop. There exists marked seasonal variability in location and intensity of the storms leaving the West African coast, which may influence the likelihood of downstream intensification and longevity. There exists considerable year-to-year variability in the number of West African storm tracks, both in numbers over the land and continuing out over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. While the low-frequency variability is well correlated with Atlantic tropical cyclone activity, West African rainfall, and SSTs, the interannual variability is found to be uncorrelated with these. In contrast, variance of the 2–6-day-filtered meridional wind, which provides a synoptic-scale measure of African easterly wave activity, shows a significant, positive correlation with tropical cyclone activity at interannual time scales.

scholarly journals The Centennial Variation of El Niño Impact on Atlantic Tropical Cyclones

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruixin Yang ◽  
Allison Fairley ◽  
Wonsun Park
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Atlantic Tropical Cyclone

Abstract Predicting tropical cyclone (TC) activity becomes more important every year while the understanding of what factors impact them continues to be complicated. El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is one of the primary factors impacting the activities in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, but an extensive examination of the fluctuation in this system has yet to be studied in its entirety. This article analyzes the ENSO impacts on the Atlantic tropical cyclone activity during the assessed warm and cold years to show the dominant centennial-scale variation impact. This study looks to plausibly link this variation to the Southern Ocean centennial variability, which is rarely mentioned in any factors affecting the Atlantic tropical cyclone activity. This centennial variability could be used to enhance future work related to predicting tropical cyclones.

scholarly journals Atlantic tropical cyclones downscaled from climate reanalyses show increasing activity over past 150 years

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Emanuel
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Model Driven ◽  
Early Portion ◽  
Atlantic Tropical Cyclone

AbstractHistorical records of Atlantic hurricane activity, extending back to 1851, show increasing activity over time, but much or all of this trend has been attributed to lack of observations in the early portion of the record. Here we use a tropical cyclone downscaling model driven by three global climate analyses that are based mostly on sea surface temperature and surface pressure data. The results support earlier statistically-based inferences that storms were undercounted in the 19th century, but in contrast to earlier work, show increasing tropical cyclone activity through the period, interrupted by a prominent hurricane drought in the 1970s and 80 s that we attribute to anthropogenic aerosols. In agreement with earlier work, we show that most of the variability of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity over the last century was directly related to regional rather than global climate change. Most metrics of tropical cyclones downscaled over all the tropics show weak and/or insignificant trends over the last century, illustrating the special nature of North Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology.

scholarly journals Coastal flooding will disproportionately impact people on river deltas

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Edmonds ◽  
Rebecca L. Caldwell ◽  
Eduardo S. Brondizio ◽  
Sacha M. O. Siani
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Tropical Cyclone ◽  
Tropical Cyclones ◽  
Coastal Flooding ◽  
Tropical Cyclone Activity ◽  
Cyclone Activity ◽  
Know How ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
River Deltas ◽  
Global Population

Abstract Climate change is intensifying tropical cyclones, accelerating sea-level rise, and increasing coastal flooding. River deltas are especially vulnerable to flooding because of their low elevations and densely populated cities. Yet, we do not know how many people live on deltas and their exposure to flooding. Using a new global dataset, we show that 339 million people lived on river deltas in 2017 and 89% of those people live in the same latitudinal zone as most tropical cyclone activity. We calculate that 41% (31 million) of the global population exposed to tropical cyclone flooding live on deltas, with 92% (28 million) in developing or least developed economies. Furthermore, 80% (25 million) live on sediment-starved deltas, which cannot naturally mitigate flooding through sediment deposition. Given that coastal flooding will only worsen, we must reframe this problem as one that will disproportionately impact people on river deltas, particularly in developing and least-developed economies.

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