Are Cyclones/Hurricanes Really Getting Stronger Under Global Warming?

Validating Atmospheric Reanalysis Data Using Tropical Cyclones as Thermometers

Author:

Kossin

Abstract:

Temperatures in the upper-troposphere of the atmosphere, near the tropopause, play a key role in the evolution of tropical cyclones (TC) by controlling their potential intensity (PI), which describes the thermodynamically-based maximum TC intensity that the environment will support. Accurately identifying past trends in PI is critical for understanding the causes of observed changes in TC intensity, but calculations of PI trends using different atmospheric reanalysis products can give very different results, due largely to differences in their representation of upper-tropospheric temperatures. Without a means to verify the fidelity of the upper tropospheric temperatures, PI trends calculated from these products are very uncertain.

Here, a method is introduced to validate the upper-tropospheric temperatures in the reanalysis products by using the TCs themselves as thermometers. Using a 30-year global dataset of TC cloud-top temperatures, and three widely-utilized atmospheric reanalysis products – MERRA, ERA-Interim, and NCEP/NCAR – it is shown that storm-local upper-level temperatures in the MERRA and ERA-Interim data vary similarly to the TC cloud-top temperatures on both interannual and decadal timescales, but the NCEP/NCAR data have substantial biases that introduce an increasing trend in storm-local PI not found in the other two products. The lack of global storm-local PI trends is due to a balance between temporal increases in the mean state and the poleward migration of TCs into lower climatological PI, and has significant implications for the detection and attribution of mean TC intensity trends.

Model Predicts Less Storms like Sandy

Model projections of atmospheric steering of Sandy-like superstorms

Authors:

1. Elizabeth A. Barnes (a,b)
2. Lorenzo M. Polvani (b,c)
3. Adam H. Sobel (b,c)

Affiliations:

a. Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523;

b. Division of Ocean and Climate Physics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY 10964; and

c. Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

Abstract:

Superstorm Sandy ravaged the eastern seaboard of the United States, costing a great number of lives and billions of dollars in damage. Whether events like Sandy will become more frequent as anthropogenic greenhouse gases continue to increase remains an open and complex question. Here we consider whether the persistent large-scale atmospheric patterns that steered Sandy onto the coast will become more frequent in the coming decades. Using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, phase 5 multimodel ensemble, we demonstrate that climate models consistently project a decrease in the frequency and persistence of the westward flow that led to Sandy’s unprecedented track, implying that future atmospheric conditions are less likely than at present to propel storms westward into the coast.

Time Lapse of Sandy Hitting Manhattan