The passing of over three decades since tropical cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin on Christmas Day 1974 provided a reason to reflect upon the progress of numerical weather prediction over that period. Each decade was characterised by major model changes. In Australia, the 1970s saw the operational implementation of a 7-level baroclinic filtered model at a grid spacing of 254 km, with rudimentary...

The tropical cyclone-ocean interaction was investigated using a high-r(~solution tropical cyclone ocean coupled model. The model design consisted of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory tropical cyclone prediction model which was coupled with a multilayer primitive equation ocean model. Coupling between the hurricane and the ocean models was carried out by passing into the ocean model...

Recent reviews have concluded that efforts to date have yet to detect or attribute an anthropogenic climate change influence on Atlantic tropical cyclone (of at least tropical storm strength) behaviour and concomitant damage. However, the possibility of identifying such influence in the future cannot be ruled out. Using projections of future tropical cyclone activity from a recent prominent stu...

5 [1] The assumption that tropical cyclones respond primarily to sea surface temperatures (SSTs) local to 6 their main development regions underlies much of the concern regarding the possible impacts of 7 anthropogenic greenhouse warming on tropical cyclone statistics. Here the observed relationship between 8 changes in sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone intensities in the Atlantic ba...

*Correspondence: Thomas E. Marler, Western Pacific Tropical Research Center, College of Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Guam, 303 University Drive, UOG Station, Mangilao, GU 96923, USA e-mail: [email protected] Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines in 2013 and illuminates the fact that the majority of tropical cyclone (TC) research has focused on the Atlantic Basin, contin...

Tropical cyclone wind–pressure relationships are reexamined using 15 yr of minimum sea level pressure estimates, numerical analysis fields, and best-track intensities. Minimum sea level pressure is estimated from aircraft reconnaissance or measured from dropwindsondes, and maximum wind speeds are interpolated from best-track maximum 1-min wind speed estimates. The aircraft data were collected p...

Recent research to increase understanding, and techniques to improve forecasts, of the structure and structural changes of a tropical cyclone due to interaction with the environment are summarized. The atmospheric environment is considered here, and the oceanic, and air-sea interface environments are summarized in Topic 1.3. Progress in understanding how a tropical cyclone interacts with its en...

Recent assessments agree that tropical cyclone intensity should increase as the climate warms. Less agreement exists on the detection of recent historical trends in tropical cyclone intensity. We interpret future and recent historical trends by using the theory of potential intensity, which predicts the maximum intensity achievable by a tropical cyclone in a given local environment. Although gr...

In the first part of this chapter, we give a review of the relationship of climate and tropical cyclones on various time scales, from intra-seasonal to decadal. The response of tropical cyclone activity to natural modes of variability, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Madden Julian Oscillation in various regions of the world are discussed. Genesis location, track types and intensity...

The objective of this study is to understand how interactions with upper-tropospheric troughs affect the intensity of tropical cyclones. The study includes all named Atlantic tropical cyclones between 1985 and 1996. To minimize other factors affecting intensity change, times when storms are over subcritical sea surface temperatures (#268C) or near landfall are removed from the sample. A trough ...