On the factors affecting trends and variability in tropical cyclone potential intensity
Tropical cyclone potential intensity (V[subscript p]) is controlled by thermodynamic air-sea disequilibrium and thermodynamic efficiency, which is a function of the sea surface temperature and the tropical cyclone’s outflow temperature. Observed trends and variability in V[subscript p] in each ocean...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109503 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2194-8709 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2066-2082 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2020-7581 |
| Summary: | Tropical cyclone potential intensity (V[subscript p]) is controlled by thermodynamic air-sea disequilibrium and thermodynamic efficiency, which is a function of the sea surface temperature and the tropical cyclone’s outflow temperature. Observed trends and variability in V[subscript p] in each ocean basin are decomposed into contributions from these two components. Robustly detectable trends are found only in the North
Atlantic, where tropical tropopause layer (TTL) cooling contributes up to a third of the increase in Vp. The contribution from disequilibrium dominates the few statistically significant V[subscript p] trends in the other basins. The results are sensitive to the data set used and details of the V[subscript p] calculation, reflecting uncertainties in
TTL temperature trends and the difficulty of estimating V[subscript p] and its components. We also find that 20–71% of the interannual variability in V[subscript p] is linked to the TTL, with correlations between detrended time series of
thermodynamic efficiency and V[subscript p] occurring over all ocean basins. |
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