Estimation of Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Frequency in the United States

Tropical cyclones pose a significant flood risk to vast land regions in their path because of extreme precipitation. Thus it is imperative to quantitatively assess this risk. This study compares exceedance frequencies of tropical cyclone precipitation derived from two independent observational datas...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Feldmann, Monika, Emanuel, Kerry, Zhu, Laiyin, Lohmann, Ulrike
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Meteorological Society 2020
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124924
Description
Summary:Tropical cyclones pose a significant flood risk to vast land regions in their path because of extreme precipitation. Thus it is imperative to quantitatively assess this risk. This study compares exceedance frequencies of tropical cyclone precipitation derived from two independent observational datasets with those estimated using a tropical cyclone rainfall algorithm applied to large sets of synthetic tropical cyclones. The modeled rainfall compares reasonably well to observed rainfall across much of the southern United States but does less well in the mid-Atlantic states. Possible causes of this disparity are discussed. © 2019 American Meteorological Society.