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Tropical storms: representation and diagnosis in climate models and the impacts of climate change

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Abstract

Tropical storms are located and tracked in an experiment in which a high-resolution atmosphere only model is forced with observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea ice. The structure, geographic distribution and seasonal variability of the model tropical storms show some similarities with observations. The simulation of tropical storms is better in this high-resolution experiment than in a parallel standard resolution experiment. In an anomaly experiment, sea ice, SSTs and greenhouse-gas forcing are changed to mimic the changes that occur in a coupled model as greenhouse-gases are increased. There are more tropical storms in this experiment than in the control experiment in the Northeast Pacific and Indian Ocean basins and fewer in the North Atlantic, Northwest Pacific and Southwest Pacific region. The changes in the North Atlantic and Northwest Pacific can be linked to El Niño-like behaviour. A comparison of the tracking results with two empirically derived tropical storm genesis parameters is carried out. The tracking technique and a convective genesis parameter give similar results, both in the global distribution and in the changes in the individual basins. The convective genesis parameter is also applied to parallel coupled model experiments that have a lower horizontal resolution. The changes in the global distribution of tropical storms in the coupled model experiments are consistent with the changes seen at higher resolution. This indicates that the convective genesis parameter may still provide useful information about tropical storm changes in experiments carried out with models that cannot resolve tropical storms.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out under the UK Government Meteorological Research Programme. Rachel Stratton carried out the N144 and N48 experiments and Tim Johns carried out the HadCM3 experiments. Kevin Hodges of Reading University wrote the tracking programs and David Jackson modified the tracking to identify TSs. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments that have improved this paper. We thank ECMWF for the use of their re-analysis (ERA) dataset and the CPC for the use of the CMAP data. We also thank the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), Colorado State University and the Tropical Prediction Center for the use of their tropical storm best track data. The Southern Hemisphere and North Indian data were downloaded from http://metoc.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc/best_tracks/ and the Northwest Pacific, North Atlantic, and Northeast Pacific data were downloaded from http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB, United Kingdom

    R. E. McDonald, D. G. Bleaken, D. R. Cresswell, V. D. Pope & C. A. Senior

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  1. R. E. McDonald
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  2. D. G. Bleaken
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  3. D. R. Cresswell
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  4. V. D. Pope
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  5. C. A. Senior
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Correspondence to R. E. McDonald.

Appendix The tracking technique (TRACKS)

Appendix The tracking technique (TRACKS)

We locate and track tropical storms by applying a two stage objective technique to data at 12-h intervals. In the first stage (Hodges 1994), we track local centres of 850 hPa relative vorticity with a magnitude greater than 5×10−5 s−1. We track relative vorticity centres on 850 hPa as this is a more effective way of identifying tropical storm tracks than by tracking centres of low pressure (Serrano 1997). We selected the threshold of 5×10−5 s−1 after carrying out some simple tests using the N144 experiment.

However, even with our chosen threshold, the relative vorticity tracks still include some systems which are not TSs and so in the second stage we filter the tracks to select only TSs. As well as satisfying strength, lifetime and formation region criteria each track has to have a warm core. The warm core conditions are applied to temperature anomalies (T a ), which are defined as the temperature at the centre minus the mean temperature of a 15° by 15° region surrounding the centre.

In summary, the criteria that we used to identify tropical storms are:

A local maximum of 850 hPa relative vorticity with an absolute value greater than 5.0×10−5 s−1 at all points along the track.

The tropical storm forms over the ocean between the latitudes of 30°N and 30°S.

The lifetime of the tropical storm is at least 2 days.

T a on 300 hPa > 0.0, at all points along the track.

T a on 300 hPa > 0.5 K, for any two of the first, middle or last points of the track.

T a on 300 hPa > T a on 850 hPa, for any two of the first, middle or last points of the track.

In N48 the temperature anomalies on 300 hPa were replaced by anomalies on 200 hPa, as temperature data on 300 hPa was not available for this experiment.

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McDonald, R.E., Bleaken, D.G., Cresswell, D.R. et al. Tropical storms: representation and diagnosis in climate models and the impacts of climate change. Climate Dynamics 25, 19–36 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-004-0491-0

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