Tropical cyclones (TCs) are identified and tracked in six recent reanalysis data sets and compared with those from the IBTrACS best track archive. Results indicate that nearly every cyclone present in IBTrACS over the period 1979-2012 can be found in all six reanalyses using a tracking and matching approach. However, TC intensities are significantly under-represented in the reanalyses compared ...

347 MARCH 2008 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | T ropical cyclones account for the majority of natural catastrophic losses in the developed world and, next to floods, are the leading cause of death and injury among natural disasters affecting developing countries (UNDP/BCPR 2004). It is thus of some interest to understand how their behavior is affected by climate change, whether natural or ant...

The formation of tropical storms in a low-resolution Atmospheric General Circulation model is studied over the western North Pacific region during the June–October season. The model simulates the mean annual cycle of storm number in this basin quite well. Time-dependent composites of the storms are formed and analyzed, with a focus on the temporal evolution of quantities averaged in space aroun...

In the past, many objective techniques have been evaluated for severe tropical cyclones in the Atlantic, but little has been done along this line in the Pacific. A computer program was developed at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, to verify 10 separate 24-hr. forecast techniques. During the course of the 1967 season, a total of 14 different techniques were tested on 27 tropical cyclones. All t...

The goal is to investigate, theoretically and through analyzing existing data, the role that sea spray plays in transferring heat, moisture, and momentum across the air-sea interface, especially in high winds. Ultimately, I plan to develop simple, fast, physics-based parameterizations for these air-sea fluxes for use in large-scale models, especially those simulating tropical and extratropical ...

The paper explores the impact of the initial-data, parameter and structural model uncertainty on the simulation of a tropical cyclone-like vortex in the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). An analytic technique is used to initialize the model with an idealized weak vortex that develops into a tropical cyclone over ten simulation days. A total of 7...

Tropical cyclone (TC) tornado prediction remains a substantial challenge, both on its own and compared to advances made in prognostically relevant understanding of midlatitude supercells in particular. An ingredients-based approach (e.g., Johns and Doswell 1992), used for supercell tornado environments in midlatitudes, likewise can be applied to TCs, focusing on moisture, instability, vertical ...

The purpose of this article is twofold. The first is to point out and correct several misconceptions about the putative WISHE mechanism of tropical cyclone intensification that currently are being taught to atmospheric science students, to tropical weather forecasters, and to laypeople who seek to understand how tropical cyclones intensify. The mechanism relates to the simplest problem of an in...