Accessibility navigation


Tropical cyclone climatology in a 10-km global atmospheric GCM: toward weather-resolving climate modeling

Manganello, J. V., Hodges, K. I., Kinter III, J. L., Cash , B. A., Marx, L., Jung , T. , Achuthavarier, D., Adams, J. M., Altshuler, E. L., Huang, B., Jin, E. K., Stan, C., Towers, P. and Wedi, N. (2012) Tropical cyclone climatology in a 10-km global atmospheric GCM: toward weather-resolving climate modeling. Journal of Climate, 25. pp. 3867-3893. ISSN 1520-0442

Full text not archived in this repository.

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00346.1

Abstract/Summary

Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone (TC) activity is investigated in multiyear global climate simulations with theECMWFIntegrated Forecast System (IFS) at 10-km resolution forced by the observed records of sea surface temperature and sea ice. The results are compared to analogous simulationswith the 16-, 39-, and 125-km versions of the model as well as observations. In the North Atlantic, mean TC frequency in the 10-km model is comparable to the observed frequency, whereas it is too low in the other versions. While spatial distributions of the genesis and track densities improve systematically with increasing resolution, the 10-km model displays qualitatively more realistic simulation of the track density in the western subtropical North Atlantic. In the North Pacific, the TC count tends to be too high in thewest and too low in the east for all resolutions. These model errors appear to be associated with the errors in the large-scale environmental conditions that are fairly similar in this region for all model versions. The largest benefits of the 10-km simulation are the dramatically more accurate representation of the TC intensity distribution and the structure of the most intense storms. The model can generate a supertyphoon with a maximum surface wind speed of 68.4 m s21. The life cycle of an intense TC comprises intensity fluctuations that occur in apparent connection with the variations of the eyewall/rainband structure. These findings suggest that a hydrostatic model with cumulus parameterization and of high enough resolution could be efficiently used to simulate the TC intensity response (and the associated structural changes) to future climate change.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO)
ID Code:28812
Publisher:American Meteorological Society

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

Page navigation