Meteorology: hurricanes and global warming

Anthropogenic climate change has the potential for slightly increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones through warming of sea surface temperatures. Emanuel has shown a striking and surprising association between sea surface temperatures and destructiveness by tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and western North Pacific basins. However, I question his analysis on the following grounds: it does not properly represent the observations described; the use of his Atlantic bias-removal scheme may not be warranted; and further investigation of a substantially longer time series for tropical cyclones affecting the continental United States does not show a tendency for increasing destructiveness. These factors indicate that instead of "unprecedented" tropical cyclone activity having occurred in recent years, hurricane intensity was equal or even greater during the last active period in the mid-twentieth century.     

1980-2015年间北部湾海域热带气旋的变化及特征分析

由于地理特征独特,北部湾地区常年遭受热带气旋的影响。热带气旋引起的波浪灾害和风暴潮灾害对广西沿海经济、生活造成了巨大影响。本文采用中国气象局热带气旋最佳路径数据集,研究了1980—2015年间进入北部湾的热带气旋的变化及特征,对北部湾海域内热带气旋的频数、强度、持续时长、功耗指数等年际趋势变化进行分析。结果表明:1980—2015年,北部湾地区热带气旋的频数、持续时长呈波动减小趋势,其强度呈波动增加趋势,整体上功率耗散系数(Power Dissipation Index,PDI)的正效应大于负效应。本研究为北部湾地区的海洋防灾减灾提供了相关科学依据。     

Meteorology: are there trends in hurricane destruction?

Since the record impact of Hurricane Katrina, attention has focused on understanding trends in hurricanes and their destructive potential. Emanuel reports a marked increase in the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on identification of a trend in an accumulated annual index of power dissipation in the North Atlantic and western North Pacific since the 1970s. If hurricanes are indeed becoming more destructive over time, then this trend should manifest itself in more destruction. However, my analysis of a long-term data set of hurricane losses in the United States shows no upward trend once the data are normalized to remove the effects of societal changes.     

Large contribution of sea surface warming to recent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity

Atlantic hurricane activity has increased significantly since 1995 (refs 1-4), but the underlying causes of this increase remain uncertain. It is widely thought that rising Atlantic sea surface temperatures have had a role in this, but the magnitude of this contribution is not known. Here we quantify this contribution for storms that formed in the tropical North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico; these regions together account for most of the hurricanes that make landfall in the United States. We show that a statistical model based on two environmental variables--local sea surface temperature and an atmospheric wind field--can replicate a large proportion of the variance in tropical Atlantic hurricane frequency and activity between 1965 and 2005. We then remove the influence of the atmospheric wind field to assess the contribution of sea surface temperature. Our results indicate that the sensitivity of tropical Atlantic hurricane activity to August-September sea surface temperature over the period we consider is such that a 0.5 degrees C increase in sea surface temperature is associated with a approximately 40% increase in hurricane frequency and activity. The results also indicate that local sea surface warming was responsible for approximately 40% of the increase in hurricane activity relative to the 1950-2000 average between 1996 and 2005. Our analysis does not identify whether warming induced by greenhouse gases contributed to the increase in hurricane activity, but the ability of climate models to reproduce the observed relationship between hurricanes and sea surface temperature will serve as a useful means of assessing whether they are likely to provide reliable projections of future changes in Atlantic hurricane activity.     

Effect of remote sea surface temperature change on tropical cyclone potential intensity

The response of tropical cyclone activity to global warming is widely debated. It is often assumed that warmer sea surface temperatures provide a more favourable environment for the development and intensification of tropical cyclones, but cyclone genesis and intensity are also affected by the vertical thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere. Here we use climate models and observational reconstructions to explore the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone 'potential intensity'--a measure that provides an upper bound on cyclone intensity and can also reflect the likelihood of cyclone development. We find that changes in local sea surface temperature are inadequate for characterizing even the sign of changes in potential intensity, but that long-term changes in potential intensity are closely related to the regional structure of warming; regions that warm more than the tropical average are characterized by increased potential intensity, and vice versa. We use this relationship to reconstruct changes in potential intensity over the twentieth century from observational reconstructions of sea surface temperature. We find that, even though tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures are currently at a historical high, Atlantic potential intensity probably peaked in the 1930s and 1950s, and recent values are near the historical average. Our results indicate that--per unit local sea surface temperature change--the response of tropical cyclone activity to natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized changes in sea surface temperature, may be larger than the response to the more uniform patterns of greenhouse-gas-induced warming.     

Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon

The processes that control the formation, intensity and track of hurricanes are poorly understood. It has been proposed that an increase in sea surface temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change has led to an increase in the frequency of intense tropical cyclones, but this proposal has been challenged on the basis that the instrumental record is too short and unreliable to reveal trends in intense tropical cyclone activity. Storm-induced deposits preserved in the sediments of coastal lagoons offer the opportunity to study the links between climatic conditions and hurricane activity on longer timescales, because they provide centennial- to millennial-scale records of past hurricane landfalls. Here we present a record of intense hurricane activity in the western North Atlantic Ocean over the past 5,000 years based on sediment cores from a Caribbean lagoon that contain coarse-grained deposits associated with intense hurricane landfalls. The record indicates that the frequency of intense hurricane landfalls has varied on centennial to millennial scales over this interval. Comparison of the sediment record with palaeo-climate records indicates that this variability was probably modulated by atmospheric dynamics associated with variations in the El Ni?o/Southern Oscillation and the strength of the West African monsoon, and suggests that sea surface temperatures as high as at present are not necessary to support intervals of frequent intense hurricanes. To accurately predict changes in intense hurricane activity, it is therefore important to understand how the El Ni?o/Southern Oscillation and the West African monsoon will respond to future climate change.     

Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector

The climate of the North Atlantic region exhibits fluctuations on decadal timescales that have large societal consequences. Prominent examples include hurricane activity in the Atlantic, and surface-temperature and rainfall variations over North America, Europe and northern Africa. Although these multidecadal variations are potentially predictable if the current state of the ocean is known, the lack of subsurface ocean observations that constrain this state has been a limiting factor for realizing the full skill potential of such predictions. Here we apply a simple approach-that uses only sea surface temperature (SST) observations-to partly overcome this difficulty and perform retrospective decadal predictions with a climate model. Skill is improved significantly relative to predictions made with incomplete knowledge of the ocean state, particularly in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans. Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.     

Perspectives on the linkage between typhoon activity and global warming from recent research advances in paleotempestology

The recent increase in typhoon （tropical cyclone） activity has attracted great interest and induced heated debates over whether it is linked to global warming or only a return to an active phase of the well-known multi-decadal variability. Due to the short instrumental record, our knowledge is quite scarce on the complex processes and mechanism of typhoon generation, development, and evolution, especially for the rare but highly destructive super-typhoons. It is therefore very important to extend the time span of typhoon activity records. Paleotempestology, a young science that emerged in the early 1990s, studies past typhoon activity spanning several centuries to millennia before the instrumental era through the use of geological proxies and historical documentary records. This paper presents a brief review and synthesis on the major research advances and findings of paleotempestology with an emphasis on proxy technique development and applications. The methodology has been evolving from single geologic proxy to multi-proxy techniques by integrating microfossils, sedimentary organic elemental ratios, and stable isotopes, together with typical sedimentary textures and structures, for the diagnosis of storm deposits. A newly-developed proxy technique is employing oxygen isotopes preserved in growing laminae of tree rings, cave stalagmites, and reef corals to diagnose typhoon rainwater impacts. Historical documentary records have been systematically compiled and analyzed to reconstruct the history of typhoon activity in some regions. The extracted typhoon-proxy data show that there does not exist a simple linear relationship between typhoon frequency and Holocene climate （temperature） change. Typhoon activity should have a secular and constant linkage with ENSO fluctuations, in that more typhoons and hurricanes make landfalls in China, Central and North America during La Ni~↑na years than El Ni~↑no years. This finding is consistent with that derived from recent instrumental data. Shifts in positions of     

Arabian Sea tropical cyclones intensified by emissions of black carbon and other aerosols

Throughout the year, average sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea are warm enough to support the development of tropical cyclones, but the atmospheric monsoon circulation and associated strong vertical wind shear limits cyclone development and intensification, only permitting a pre-monsoon and post-monsoon period for cyclogenesis. Thus a recent increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones over the northern Indian Ocean is thought to be related to the weakening of the climatological vertical wind shear. At the same time, anthropogenic emissions of aerosols have increased sixfold since the 1930s, leading to a weakening of the southwesterly lower-level and easterly upper-level winds that define the monsoonal circulation over the Arabian Sea. In principle, this aerosol-driven circulation modification could affect tropical cyclone intensity over the Arabian Sea, but so far no such linkage has been shown. Here we report an increase in the intensity of pre-monsoon Arabian Sea tropical cyclones during the period 1979-2010, and show that this change in storm strength is a consequence of a simultaneous upward trend in anthropogenic black carbon and sulphate emissions. We use a combination of observational, reanalysis and model data to demonstrate that the anomalous circulation, which is radiatively forced by these anthropogenic aerosols, reduces the basin-wide vertical wind shear, creating an environment more favourable for tropical cyclone intensification. Because most Arabian Sea tropical cyclones make landfall, our results suggest an additional impact on human health from regional air pollution.     

The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones

Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger on average, with a 30-year trend that has been related to an increase in ocean temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere. Over the rest of the tropics, however, possible trends in tropical cyclone intensity are less obvious, owing to the unreliability and incompleteness of the observational record and to a restricted focus, in previous trend analyses, on changes in average intensity. Here we overcome these two limitations by examining trends in the upper quantiles of per-cyclone maximum wind speeds (that is, the maximum intensities that cyclones achieve during their lifetimes), estimated from homogeneous data derived from an archive of satellite records. We find significant upward trends for wind speed quantiles above the 70th percentile, with trends as high as 0.3 +/- 0.09 m s(-1) yr(-1) (s.e.) for the strongest cyclones. We note separate upward trends in the estimated lifetime-maximum wind speeds of the very strongest tropical cyclones (99th percentile) over each ocean basin, with the largest increase at this quantile occurring over the North Atlantic, although not all basins show statistically significant increases. Our results are qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind.     

西北太平洋热带气旋气候特征及其变化研究的若干进展

为了对我国气象工作者全面了解和参与热带气旋的研究有所帮助,在大量阅读和调研的基础上,介绍了近20年西北太平洋热带气旋活动在季节、年际和年代际尺度上研究的若干主要成果.重点阐述了EN-SO与热带气旋的关系,温室效应热带气旋的数值模拟和观测研究等的最新动态.     

Dust storm in Asia continent and its bio-environmental effects in the North Pacific： A case study of the strongest dust event in April, 2001 in central Asia

The iron hypothesis, first proposed by John Martin in 1990[1], suggests that some surface oceans such as North and Equatorial Pacific Oceans have high nutrient but low chlorophyll (HNLC). Thus iron coming from terrestrial dusts is the primary factor limit…     

热带气旋与南海季风的相互作用

通过个例分析和历史统计, 对热带气旋与夏季南海季风的相互作用进行了研究, 揭示了热带气旋活动导致南海低空急流增强的机制。在个例分析中, 以0604 号热带气旋 “碧利斯”为例, 利用中尺度数值模式 MM5 进行了多组数值模拟实验。结果表明, 强盛的西南季风使热带气旋登陆的维持时间变长, 对热带气旋的降水有显著的增幅作用; 与此同时, 热带气旋对西南季风的作用也不可忽略。在热带气旋登陆过程中引发的一系列中尺度对流系统, 会使得南海上空低层大气的气压梯度力增大, 导致南海季风中低空急流增强。最后, 对 1950?2009 年具有与 “碧利斯”相似路径的30 个热带气旋进行了统计, 发现其中80% 的热带气旋活动伴随着南海区域低空风速的正异常。     

Reduced drag coefficient for high wind speeds in tropical cyclones

The transfer of momentum between the atmosphere and the ocean is described in terms of the variation of wind speed with height and a drag coefficient that increases with sea surface roughness and wind speed. But direct measurements have only been available for weak winds; momentum transfer under extreme wind conditions has therefore been extrapolated from these field measurements. Global Positioning System sondes have been used since 1997 to measure the profiles of the strong winds in the marine boundary layer associated with tropical cyclones. Here we present an analysis of these data, which show a logarithmic increase in mean wind speed with height in the lowest 200 m, maximum wind speed at 500 m and a gradual weakening up to a height of 3 km. By determining surface stress, roughness length and neutral stability drag coefficient, we find that surface momentum flux levels off as the wind speeds increase above hurricane force. This behaviour is contrary to surface flux parameterizations that are currently used in a variety of modelling applications, including hurricane risk assessment and prediction of storm motion, intensity, waves and storm surges.     

热带气旋与台风气候变化研究进展

 近年来,引起严重灾害的热带气旋和台风气候变化研究均有新的进展：近60年观测资料比对表明,由于海上观测手段不足,造成前期资料可靠性较低,近30~40年资料较为可靠,观测资料的可靠性随热带气旋强度的增强而增加;全球6个洋区观测资料计算分析显示,热带气旋存在多年代际变率,约自1970年以来,强和超强热带气旋活动有增强趋势;统计和动力降尺度方法模拟热带气旋频数和强度与观测检验证实,这些方法具有一定的模拟热带气旋的能力,但尚存比较大的不确定性;利用统计和动力降尺度模型及模式考虑21世纪人类排放增加全球变暖,较为一致地预估西北太平洋和北大西洋强台风（飓风）强度和频数都有可能增强。热带气旋和台风均属于给人类带来巨大灾难的极端气候事件,利用目前的统计和动力降尺度方法很难进行较为准确的未来年以上时间尺度的气候预测和预估,尚需对影响因子和预测与预估方法进行更加深入的研究,进一步减小预测和预估的不确定性。     

2020年海洋气象研究热点回眸

 回顾了2020年影响东亚气候的梅雨锋、季风、台风、海气通量、风暴潮等天气过程与机制研究取得的重要进展,探讨了海洋气象学的未来发展方向。     

Observational evidence for an ocean heat pump induced by tropical cyclones

Ocean mixing affects global climate and the marine biosphere because it is linked to the ocean's ability to store and transport heat and nutrients. Observations have constrained the magnitude of upper ocean mixing associated with certain processes, but mixing rates measured directly are significantly lower than those inferred from budget analyses, suggesting that other processes may play an important role. The winds associated with tropical cyclones are known to lead to localized mixing of the upper ocean, but the hypothesis that tropical cyclones are important mixing agents at the global scale has not been tested. Here we calculate the effect of tropical cyclones on surface ocean temperatures by comparing surface temperatures before and after storm passage, and use these results to calculate the vertical mixing induced by tropical cyclone activity. Our results indicate that tropical cyclones are responsible for significant cooling and vertical mixing of the surface ocean in tropical regions. Assuming that all the heat that is mixed downwards is balanced by heat transport towards the poles, we calculate that approximately 15 per cent of peak ocean heat transport may be associated with the vertical mixing induced by tropical cyclones. Furthermore, our analyses show that the magnitude of this mixing is strongly related to sea surface temperature, indicating that future changes in tropical sea surface temperatures may have significant effects on ocean circulation and ocean heat transport that are not currently accounted for in climate models.     

近35年登陆我国台风的年际变化特征及灾害特点

根据近35年的台风资料,分析了在西北太平洋和南海海域生成台风及在我国登陆台风的年际变化特征。结果表明,近35年间在西北太平洋和南海生成的台风和热带风暴有减少的趋势,并且登陆我国的台风和热带风暴也有微弱的减少趋势,但登陆的台风(登陆时中心附近最大风速≥32.7m/s)略有增加的趋势。分析表明,7-10月是生成台风和热带风暴最为频繁的季节,生成个数占全年生成总数的71%,而在我国登陆时间主要集中在7-9月,约占全年登陆总数的78%。我国台风灾害具有发生频次高、影响范围广、受灾程度重等特点。此外,对近几年我国的台风灾害进行了总体的评估。     

Low Atlantic hurricane activity in the 1970s and 1980s compared to the past 270 years

Hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean has increased significantly since 1995 (refs 1, 2). This trend has been attributed to both anthropogenically induced climate change and natural variability, but the primary cause remains uncertain. Changes in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the past can provide insights into the factors that influence hurricane activity, but reliable observations of hurricane activity in the North Atlantic only cover the past few decades. Here we construct a record of the frequency of major Atlantic hurricanes over the past 270 years using proxy records of vertical wind shear and sea surface temperature (the main controls on the formation of major hurricanes in this region) from corals and a marine sediment core. The record indicates that the average frequency of major hurricanes decreased gradually from the 1760s until the early 1990s, reaching anomalously low values during the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, the phase of enhanced hurricane activity since 1995 is not unusual compared to other periods of high hurricane activity in the record and thus appears to represent a recovery to normal hurricane activity, rather than a direct response to increasing sea surface temperature. Comparison of the record with a reconstruction of vertical wind shear indicates that variability in this parameter primarily controlled the frequency of major hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past 270 years, suggesting that changes in the magnitude of vertical wind shear will have a significant influence on future hurricane activity.     

Sea surface temperature east of Australia： A predictor of tropical cyclone frequency over the western North Pacific？

The relationship between sea surface temperature (SST) east of Australia and tropical cyclone frequency over the western North Pacific (WNPTCF) is analyzed by use of observation data.The WNPTCF from June to October is correlated negatively to spring SST east of Australia.When the spring SST is in the positive phase,a cyclonic circulation anomaly in the upper troposphere and an anticyclonic circulation anomaly in the lower troposphere prevail over the western North Pacific from June to October,concurrent with an anomalous atmospheric subsidence and an enlarged vertical zonal wind shear.These conditions are unfavorable for tropical cyclone genesis,and thus WNPTCF decreases.The negative phase of the spring SST east of Australia leads to more tropical cyclones over the western North Pacific.The spring SST east of Australia may give rise to simultaneous change in tropical atmospheric circulation via the teleconnection wave train,and then subsequently affect atmospheric circulation variation over the western North Pacific.