Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change
Name
Knutson_NatureGeo_main_rev.pdf
Size
1.19 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Knutson, Thomas R.
McBride, John L.
Chan, Johnny
Emanuel, Kerry Andrew
Holland, Greg
Landsea, Chris
Held, Isaac M.
Kossin, James P.
Srivastava, A. K.
Sugi, Masato
Date Issued
February 2010
Journal
Nature Geoscience
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Knutson, Thomas R. et al. “Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change.” Nature Geosci 3.3 (2010) : 157-163.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/NGEO779
