Changes of tropical cyclone activity in a warming world are sensitive to sea surface temperature environment

While there is considerable agreement in the scientific community about the intensification of tropical cyclones (TCs) in a warming world, that consensus does not exist for TC frequency. In order to shed new light on this uncertainty, we classified the global oceans into three pools based on SST per...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Banglin Zhang, Renhe Zhang, Rachel T Pinker, Yerong Feng, Changchun Nie, Yuping Guan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2019-01-01
Series:Environmental Research Letters
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab5ada
Description
Summary:While there is considerable agreement in the scientific community about the intensification of tropical cyclones (TCs) in a warming world, that consensus does not exist for TC frequency. In order to shed new light on this uncertainty, we classified the global oceans into three pools based on SST percentiles: the (a) warm (≥90th percentiles), (a) moderate (65th–90th percentiles) and (c) cool (<65th percentiles) pools, and found that TC frequency increases significantly over the cool SST pool but decreases in the warm and moderate SST pools. The differences in TC frequency change is large among the three pools, contrasting to the small trend differences of TC intensity.
ISSN:1748-9326