scholarly journals The Impact of Natural and Anthropogenic Climate Change on Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Tracks*

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 1806-1823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela J. Colbert ◽  
Brian J. Soden ◽  
Ben P. Kirtman

Abstract The impact of natural and anthropogenic climate change on tropical cyclone (TC) tracks in the western North Pacific (WNP) is examined using a beta and advection model (BAM) to isolate the influence of changes in the large-scale steering flow from changes in genesis location. The BAM captures many of the observed changes in TC tracks due to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), while little change is noted for the Pacific decadal oscillation and all-India monsoon rainfall in either observations or BAM simulations. Analysis with the BAM suggests that the observed shifts in the average track between the phases of ENSO are primarily due to changes in the large-scale steering flow, with changes in genesis location playing a secondary role. Potential changes in TC tracks over the WNP due to anthropogenic climate change are also assessed. Ensemble mean projections are downscaled from 17 CMIP3 models and 26 CMIP5 models. Statistically significant decreases [~(4%–6%)] in westward moving TCs and increases [~(5%–7%)] in recurving ocean TCs are found. These correspond to projected decreases of 3–5 TCs per decade over the Philippines and increases of 1–3 TCs per decade over the central WNP. The projected changes are primarily caused by a reduction in the easterlies. This slows the storm movement, allowing more time for the beta drift to carry the storm northward and recurve. A previous study found similar results in the North Atlantic. Taken together, these results suggest that a weakening of the mean atmospheric circulation in response to anthropogenic warming will lead to fewer landfalling storms over the North Atlantic and WNP.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hodges ◽  
Daniel Befort ◽  
Antje Weisheimer

<p>This study assesses the representation of Tropical Cyclones (TC) in an ensemble of seasonal forecast models from five different centres (ECMWF, UK Met Office, DWD, CMCC, Météo-France). Northern Hemispheric Tropical Cyclones are identified using a widely applied objective Tropical Cyclone tracking algorithm based on relative vorticity fields. Analyses for three different aspects are carried out: 1) assessment of the skill of the ensemble to predict  the TC frequencies over different ocean basins, 2) analyse the dependency between the model's ability to represent TCs and large-scale biases and 3) assess the impact of stochastic physics and horizontal resolution on TC frequency.</p><p>For the July to October season all seasonal forecast models initialized in June are skilful in predicting the observed inter-annual variability of TC frequency over the North Atlantic (NA). Similarly, the models initialized in May show significant skill over the Western North Pacific (WNP) for the season from June to October. Further to these significant positive correlations over the NA, it is found that most models are also able to discriminate between inactive and active seasons over this region. However, despite these encouraging results, especially  for skill over the NA, most models suffer from large biases. These biases are not only related to biases in the large-scale circulation but also to the representation of intrinsic model uncertainties and the relatively coarse resolution of current seasonal forecasts. At ECMWF model uncertainty is accounted for by the use of stochastic physics, which has been shown to improve forecasts on seasonal time-scales in previous studies. Using a set of simulations conducted with the ECMWF SEAS5 model, the effects of stochastic physics and resolution on the representation of Tropical Cyclones on seasonal time-scales are assessed. Including stochastic physics increases the number of TCs over all ocean basins, but especially over the North Atlantic and Western North Pacific.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-578
Author(s):  
John L. Brooke

Subsequent to Harper’s review essay centered on Brooke’s Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, Brooke concedes that he could have focused more attention on the problem of the Malthusian trap. He stresses, nevertheless, that his reservations regarding the concept of Malthusian crises in pre-industrial societies are well placed, given the concept’s prominence in the large-scale environmental histories written during the past several decades. Turning to the impact of climate change in late classical antiquity, Brooke discusses established and new evidence for increasing, sometimes catastrophic, precipitation from the Mediterranean area into central Asia after a.d. 500 and after 1250, as a result of shifts toward the negative mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation. He also surveys the evidence for emerging arguments that this cooling-driven precipitation may have triggered outbreaks of bubonic plague in Central Asia.


2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Ritchie ◽  
Kimberly M. Wood ◽  
Oscar G. Rodríguez-Herrera ◽  
Miguel F. Piñeros ◽  
J. Scott Tyo

Abstract The deviation-angle variance technique (DAV-T), which was introduced in the North Atlantic basin for tropical cyclone (TC) intensity estimation, is adapted for use in the North Pacific Ocean using the “best-track center” application of the DAV. The adaptations include changes in preprocessing for different data sources [Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-East (GOES-E) in the Atlantic, stitched GOES-E–Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-West (GOES-W) in the eastern North Pacific, and the Multifunctional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) in the western North Pacific], and retraining the algorithm parameters for different basins. Over the 2007–11 period, DAV-T intensity estimation in the western North Pacific results in a root-mean-square intensity error (RMSE, as measured by the maximum sustained surface winds) of 14.3 kt (1 kt ≈ 0.51 m s−1) when compared to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center best track, utilizing all TCs to train and test the algorithm. The RMSE obtained when testing on an individual year and training with the remaining set lies between 12.9 and 15.1 kt. In the eastern North Pacific the DAV-T produces an RMSE of 13.4 kt utilizing all TCs in 2005–11 when compared with the National Hurricane Center best track. The RMSE for individual years lies between 9.4 and 16.9 kt. The complex environment in the western North Pacific led to an extension to the DAV-T that includes two different radii of computation, producing a parametric surface that relates TC axisymmetry to intensity. The overall RMSE is reduced by an average of 1.3 kt in the western North Pacific and 0.8 kt in the eastern North Pacific. These results for the North Pacific are comparable with previously reported results using the DAV for the North Atlantic basin.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 2533-2545 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Whittleston ◽  
K. A. McColl ◽  
D. Entekhabi

The impact of future greenhouse gas forcing on the North Atlantic and North Pacific tropospheric jets remains uncertain. Opposing changes in the latitudinal temperature gradient—forced by amplified lower-atmospheric Arctic warming versus upper-atmospheric tropical warming—make robust predictions a challenge. Despite some models simulating more realistic jets than others, it remains the prevailing approach to treat each model as equally probable (i.e., democratic weighting). This study compares democratically weighted projections to an alternative Bayesian-weighting method based on the ability of models to simulate historical wintertime jet climatology. The novel Bayesian technique is developed to be broadly applicable to high-dimensional fields. Results show the Bayesian weighting can reduce systematic bias and suggest the wintertime jet response to greenhouse gas forcing is largely independent of this historical bias (i.e., not state dependent). A future strengthening and narrowing is seen in both winter jets, particularly at the upper levels. The widely reported poleward shift at the level of the eddy-driven jet does not appear statistically robust, particularly over the North Atlantic, indicating sensitivity to current model deficiencies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 181463 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Cartwright ◽  
A. Venema ◽  
V. Hernandez ◽  
C. Wyels ◽  
J. Cesere ◽  
...  

Alongside changing ocean temperatures and ocean chemistry, anthropogenic climate change is now impacting the fundamental processes that support marine systems. However, where natural climate aberrations mask or amplify the impacts of anthropogenic climate change, identifying key detrimental changes is challenging. In these situations, long-term, systematic field studies allow the consequences of anthropogenically driven climate change to be distinguished from the expected fluctuations in natural resources. In this study, we describe fluctuations in encounter rates for humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae , between 2008 and 2018. Encounter rates were assessed during transect surveys of the Au'Au Channel, Maui, Hawaii. Initially, rates increased, tracking projected growth rates for this population segment. Rates reached a peak in 2013, then declined through 2018. Specifically, between 2013 and 2018, mother–calf encounter rates dropped by 76.5%, suggesting a rapid reduction in the reproductive rate of the newly designated Hawaii Distinct Population Segment of humpback whales during this time. As this decline coincided with changes in the Pacific decadal oscillation, the development of the NE Pacific marine heat wave and the evolution of the 2016 El Niño, this may be another example of the impact of this potent trifecta of climatic events within the North Pacific.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 3927-3937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Mewes ◽  
Christoph Jacobi

Abstract. Arctic amplification causes the meridional temperature gradient between middle and high latitudes to decrease. Through this decrease the large-scale circulation in the midlatitudes may change and therefore the meridional transport of heat and moisture increases. This in turn may increase Arctic warming even further. To investigate patterns of Arctic temperature, horizontal transports and their changes in time, we analysed ERA-Interim daily winter data of vertically integrated horizontal moist static energy transport using self-organizing maps (SOMs). Three general transport pathways have been identified: the North Atlantic pathway with transport mainly over the northern Atlantic, the North Pacific pathway with transport from the Pacific region, and the Siberian pathway with transport towards the Arctic over the eastern Siberian region. Transports that originate from the North Pacific are connected to negative temperature anomalies over the central Arctic. These North Pacific pathways have been becoming less frequent during the last decades. Patterns with origin of transport in Siberia are found to have no trend and show cold temperature anomalies north of Svalbard. It was found that transport patterns that favour transport through the North Atlantic into the central Arctic are connected to positive temperature anomalies over large regions of the Arctic. These temperature anomalies resemble the warm Arctic–cold continents pattern. Further, it could be shown that transport through the North Atlantic has been becoming more frequent during the last decades.


2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 3063-3075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woosuk Choi ◽  
Chang-Hoi Ho ◽  
Chun-Sil Jin ◽  
Jinwon Kim ◽  
Song Feng ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
Vol 66 (9) ◽  
pp. 2539-2558 ◽  
Author(s):  
David James Brayshaw ◽  
Brian Hoskins ◽  
Michael Blackburn

Abstract Understanding and predicting changes in storm tracks over longer time scales is a challenging problem, particularly in the North Atlantic. This is due in part to the complex range of forcings (land–sea contrast, orography, sea surface temperatures, etc.) that combine to produce the structure of the storm track. The impact of land–sea contrast and midlatitude orography on the North Atlantic storm track is investigated through a hierarchy of GCM simulations using idealized and “semirealistic” boundary conditions in a high-resolution version of the Hadley Centre atmosphere model (HadAM3). This framework captures the large-scale essence of features such as the North and South American continents, Eurasia, and the Rocky Mountains, enabling the results to be applied more directly to realistic modeling situations than was possible with previous idealized studies. The physical processes by which the forcing mechanisms impact the large-scale flow and the midlatitude storm tracks are discussed. The characteristics of the North American continent are found to be very important in generating the structure of the North Atlantic storm track. In particular, the southwest–northeast tilt in the upper tropospheric jet produced by southward deflection of the westerly flow incident on the Rocky Mountains leads to enhanced storm development along an axis close to that of the continent’s eastern coastline. The approximately triangular shape of North America also enables a cold pool of air to develop in the northeast, intensifying the surface temperature contrast across the eastern coastline, consistent with further enhancements of baroclinicity and storm growth along the same axis.


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