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Intensified Arabian Sea tropical storms

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A Brief Communications Arising to this article was published on 19 September 2012

Abstract

Arising from A. T. Evan, J. P. Kossin, C. E. Chung & V. Ramanathan Nature 479, 94–97 (2011)10.1038/nature10552

Tropical cyclones over the Arabian Sea in the pre-monsoon season (May–June) have intensified since 1997 (ref. 1, Fig. 1a) owing to significant reductions in storm-ambient vertical wind shear (VWS) in the troposphere; these reductions have decreased on average by about 3 m s−1 from the pre-1997 epoch (1979–1997) to the recent epoch (1998–2010)1. The authors attribute the reduction of pre-monsoon VWS to the dimming effects of increased anthropogenic black carbon and sulphate emissions1. However, observations show no sign of a significant decreasing trend in VWS (Fig. 1b), in contrast to the simulated, aerosol-induced decreasing trend in ref. 1. We further show that the decrease of VWS in the recent epoch is caused by substantially advanced (by 15 days) tropical-cyclone occurrences, caused by the early onset of the Asian summer monsoon. There is a Reply to this Brief Communication Arising by Evan, A. T. et al. Nature 489, doi:10.1038/nature11471 (2012).

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Figure 1: Cause of the intensified Arabian Sea tropical cyclone.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Meteorology and International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, 96822, Hawaii, USA

    Bin Wang & Shibin Xu

  2. Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster of Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Bin Wang & Liguang Wu

  3. Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Shibin Xu

Authors
  1. Bin Wang
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  2. Shibin Xu
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  3. Liguang Wu
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Contributions

B.W. planned and finalized the manuscript. L.W. drafted the manuscript, S.X. did data analysis and plotting.

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Wang, B., Xu, S. & Wu, L. Intensified Arabian Sea tropical storms. Nature 489, E1–E2 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11470

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