Atlantic tropical cyclones downscaled from climate reanalyses show increasing activity over past 150 years
Name
s41467-021-27364-8.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.04 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4ed1cd8635d49f681a9a69959a867593
Author(s)
Emanuel, Kerry
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Emanuel, Kerry. 2021. "Atlantic tropical cyclones downscaled from climate reanalyses show increasing activity over past 150 years." Nature Communications, 12 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
AbstractHistorical records of Atlantic hurricane activity, extending back to 1851, show increasing activity over time, but much or all of this trend has been attributed to lack of observations in the early portion of the record. Here we use a tropical cyclone downscaling model driven by three global climate analyses that are based mostly on sea surface temperature and surface pressure data. The results support earlier statistically-based inferences that storms were undercounted in the 19th century, but in contrast to earlier work, show increasing tropical cyclone activity through the period, interrupted by a prominent hurricane drought in the 1970s and 80 s that we attribute to anthropogenic aerosols. In agreement with earlier work, we show that most of the variability of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity over the last century was directly related to regional rather than global climate change. Most metrics of tropical cyclones downscaled over all the tropics show weak and/or insignificant trends over the last century, illustrating the special nature of North Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-021-27364-8
