The destruction wrought by North Atlantic hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 dramatically emphasizes the need for better understanding of tropical cyclone activity apart from the records provided by meteorological data and historical documentation. We present a 220-year record of oxygen isotope values of alpha-cellulose in longleaf pine tree rings that preserves anomalously low isotope values in the l...

The kinetic energy budgets of several examples of synoptic scale systems are reviewed. Included are systems containing a major cyclone development, the immediate cyclone vicinity, and the anticyclone preceding the cyclone development. These are then considered in terms of their role in the general circulation of the middle latitudes. Results show that the cyclone system and cyclone vicinity are...

Atmosphere-ocean coupling effect on the frequency distribution of tropical cyclones (TCs) and its future change is studied using an atmosphere and ocean coupled general circulation model (AOGCM). In the present climate simulation, the atmosphere-ocean coupling in the AOGCM improves biases in the AGCM such as the poleward shift of the maximum of intense TC distribution in the Northern Hemisphere...

Working with a large temporal dataset spanning several decades often represents a challenging task, especially when the record is heterogeneous and incomplete. The use of statistical laws could potentially overcome these problems. Here we apply Benford's Law (also called the "First-Digit Law") to the traveled distances of tropical cyclones since 1842. The record of tropical cyclones has been ex...

This paper describes results from a near-real-time objective technique for estimating the intensity of tropical cyclones from satellite infrared imagery in the North Atlantic Ocean basin. The technique quantifies the level of organization or axisymmetry of the infrared cloud signature of a tropical cyclone as an indirect measurement of its maximum wind speed. The final maximum wind speed calcul...

Tropical cyclones (TC) are one of the most threatening natural hazards to human beings. Although significant improvements have been made in the track prediction of TCs during the past several decades, considerable uncertainties still exist, especially for recurving tracks. In this study, we explore the physical mechanisms that drove the large recurvature of super typhoon Megi through numerical ...

Contributions of biologists to tropical cyclone research may improve by integrating concepts from other disciplines. Employing accumulated cyclone energy into protocols may foster greater integration of ecology and meteorology research. Considering experienced ecosystems as antifragile instead of just resilient may improve cross-referencing among ecological and social scientists. Quantifying ec...

The representation of convection in large-scale models remains one of the most difficult problems in atmospheric science. This is due to the need for this representation to be of conceptual nature as convective processes act on scales much smaller than the grid-spacing of global weather and climate models. As a consequence, convective processes need to be parametrized, i.e., the behaviour of va...

This article investigates the impact of Saharan dust on the development of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic. A global data assimilation and forecast system, the NASA GEOS-5, is used to assimilate all satellite and conventional data sets used operationally for numerical weather prediction. In addition, this new GEOS-5 version includes assimilation of aerosol optical depth from the Moderate Reso...

[1] Using infrared satellite imagery, best-track data, and reanalysis data, tropical cyclones are shown to contain a disproportionate amount of the deepest convection in the tropics. Although tropical cyclones account for only 7% of the deep convection in the tropics, they account for about 15% of the deep convection with cloud-top temperatures below the monthly averaged tropopause temperature ...