Summit summary

Statistical models of regional and clustered tropical cyclone (TC) activity are being developed and tested. High resolution and detailed microphysical models are capable of physically realistic models of TC behavior. General circulation models are still poor at resolving the frequency and intensity of TCs on the inter-annual time scale. There seems to be little, if any, correlation between the skill at forecasting TC frequency and model resolution. Maximum potential intensity (MPI) theory is improved by considering slantwise convection. The MPI theory continues to be important in explaining TC activity, especially in the North Atlantic. Paleotempestology is maturing as a discipline and important new results about basin-wide and global TC activity will likely ensue. New insights about historical hurricanes are possible using synoptic analysis on reanalysis data and weather prediction models. We will convene again in 2013.

3rd International Summit on Hurricanes & Climate Change

June 27-July 2, 2011, Rhodes, GREECE. It promises to be a good one. Check out the program. Props go to Ian Elsner for designing and editing the video.

Crazy guys yelling at a tornado

While hot air swirls on whether climate change is affecting tornadoes, I take a break on May 24, 2011 to chase down a few storms in Oklahoma with my son Ian and his friend Nic Parsons.

Hurricane clusters in the vicinity of Florida

Models that predict annual U.S. hurricane activity assume a Poisson distribution for the counts. This assumption leads to a forecast that under predicts both the number of years without hurricanes and the number of years with three or more Florida hurricanes. The under dispersion in forecast counts arises from a tendency for hurricanes to arrive in groups along this part of the U.S. coastline. We recently developed an extension to our earlier Poisson model that assumes the rate of hurricane clusters follows a Poisson distribution with cluster size capped at two hurricanes.

Hindcasts from the cluster model better fit the distribution of Florida hurricanes conditional on the climate covariates including the NAO and SOI. Results are similar to models that parameterize the extra-Poisson variation in the observed counts including the negative binomial and the Poisson inverse Gaussian, but we argue that the cluster model is physically consistent with the way Florida hurricanes tend to arrive in groups.

This research is done in collaboration with Thomas H. Jagger (Climatek) and is supported by the Risk Prediction Initiative. It is currently in review with the AMS Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

Statistical models for tropical cyclone activity

In collaboration with Gabriele Villarini and as part of the U.S. CLIVAR working group on hurricanes, I've written a short summary paper on statistical models for tropical cyclone activity. The paper is available here. The data for the R code are available here. The document was created using Sweave, LaTeX and R. The work is part of a larger project to publish a book on this topic with Oxford University Press. Comments and suggestions are certainly welcome.

3rd International Summit on Hurricanes and Climate Change

Over the past several years the topic of hurricanes and climate change has received considerable attention by scientists, the insurance industry, and the media. Building on the successful 1st and 2nd Summits, I am organizing the 3rd Summit to be held June 27-July 2, 2011 in Rhodes, Greece. The purpose is to bring together leading academics and researchers on various sides of the debate and from all around the world to discuss new research and express opinions about what is happening and what might happen in the future with regard to regional and global hurricane (tropical cyclone) activity. The goals are to address what research is needed to advance the science of hurricane climate and to provide a venue for encouraging a lively, spirited, and sustained exchange of ideas. Please consider joining us.

Spatial grids for hurricane climate research

We demonstrate a new framework for studying hurricane climatology. The framework consists of a spatial tessellation of the hurricane basin using equal-area hexagons. The hexagons are efficient in covering hurricane tracks and provide a scaffolding to combine attribute data from tropical cyclones with spatial climate data. The framework's utility is demonstrated using examples from recent hurricane seasons. Seasons that have similar tracks are quantitatively assessed and grouped. Regional cyclone frequency and intensity variations are mapped. A geographically-weighted regression of cyclone intensity on frequency and SST (results shown here) emphasizes the importance of a warm ocean in the intensification of cyclones over regions where the heat content is greatest. The largest differences between model predictions and observations occur near the coast. The framework would be ideally suited for comparing tropical cyclones generated from different numerical simulations (see U.S. CLIVAR hurricane working group). The hexagons have equal area and are plotted on a map using the Lambert conformal conic projection with standard parallels of 23 and 38 degrees.

Geographers poised to lead a new revolution in hurricane climate research

In my talk this week to the West Florida chapter of the American Meteorological Society I make a case that geographers are well positioned to lead a new revolution in hurricane climate research. Watch here.

Shorebirds benefit from hurricanes

Tiny threatened shorebirds on Florida’s west coast not only survive hurricanes, they seem to benefit from the storms’ aftereffects, according to new research findings that contradict conventional wisdom.

The findings could have implications for beach nourishment efforts throughout the world and how they affect wildlife.---Mickie Anderson, UF media relations. Read more. Photo credit: Western Snowy Plover, Mike Baird, Morro Bay, CA USA.

Book Review: Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico by B. Keim and R. Muller

Two professors from Louisiana State University, each having had personal experiences with hurricanes and extreme weather and each with a deep interest in weather and climate, join forces to highlight tropical storms and hurricanes that have affected the Gulf of Mexico over the past 100 to 150 years. They aim to provide a description of the climatology and history of the most notorious hurricanes of the Gulf coast for the weather and storm enthusiast as well as for the residents who “persevere in the face of hurricanes for the bounty the Gulf brings” (p. v), and they largely succeed. Read more.

Denver's R User Group

Applied spatial data analysis using R. Thomas Jagger will discuss packages used by Roger Bivand et al. in his book Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R. If you're in the area, consider joining the R-uckus.

http://www.meetup.com/DenverRUG/calendar/14863343/

Hourly Tornado Occurrence Relative to Local Sunset Time

Hurricanes and Solar Variability

How Can Solar Variability Affect Hurricanes?

An inverse relationship between hurricane activity over the Caribbean and the number of sunspots has recently been identified. Here we investigate this relationship using daily observations and find support for the hypothesis that changes in ultraviolet (UV) radiation are the cause. The relationship is statistically significant after accounting for annual variation in ocean heat and the El Nino cycle. A warming response in the upper troposphere to increased solar UV forcing, as measured by the Mg II core-to-wing ratio, decreases the atmosphere's convective available potential energy (CAPE) leading to a weaker cyclone. The response amplitude at a hurricane intensity of 44 m/s is 6.7 m/s +/- 2.56 m/s per 0.01 Mg II units (s.d.), which compares with 4.6 m/s estimated from the heat-engine theory using a temperature trend derived from observations. An increasing response sensitivity with increasing hurricane strength is found in the observations and in an application of the theory. Read more. Citation: Elsner, J. B., T. H. Jagger, and R. E. Hodges (2010), Daily tropical cyclone intensity response to solar ultraviolet radiation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L09701, doi:10.1029/2010GL043091.

Oil Spills and Hurricanes

The oil slick over the northern Gulf of Mexico will reflect more incoming sunlight so will warm slower than the surrounding ocean. If this delayed warming continues into the hurricane season, then a tropical cyclone that visits the region might have slightly weaker winds. Reduced water evaporation from any remaining oil film at the time of the hurricane will contribute to the decrease in wind speeds assuming the high winds do not immediately disperse the oil.

Frequency and Intensity Changes

Today 20% of the strongest cyclones exceed 49 m/s on average globally. With a 1C rise in SST, 20% of the strongest cyclones could exceed 51 m/s according to Elsner et al. (2008). Thus the 80th percentile increases from 49 to 51 m/s. Today, on average, 17 cyclones/yr exceed 49 m/s and 13 exceed 51 m/s. If 51 m/s is the new 80th percentile (after a 1C warming) then, without a change in the overall number of cyclones, 13 becomes 17.

3rd International Summit on Hurricanes and Climate Change

The 3rd International Summit on Hurricanes and Climate Change will be held next summer in Rhodes, Greece. The dates are set for June 27-July 2, 2011 at the Sheraton. Please join us.

Environmental Signals in Property Damage Losses

The strongest Atlantic hurricanes are getting stronger as ocean temperatures warm (Elsner et al. 2008) and the strengthening is expected to continue (Knutson et al. 2010). However, along the U.S. coast the intensity of hurricanes has not gone up and there is considerable debate about potential future damage losses from these catastrophic events. Here we model the historical damage losses and show the magnitude of losses at a return period of 50 years is largest under a scenario featuring a warm Atlantic Ocean, a weak North Atlantic surface pressure gradient, El Nino, and few sunspots. Results are consistent with our current understanding of hurricane climate variability and they suggest a future of greater long-term loss potential if seas continue to warm.

Old Hurricanes

The record of past tropical cyclones provides an important means to evaluate the hurricane hazard. Historical chronologies are a source of information about tropical cyclones prior to the modern era. Chenoweth (2006) describes an archive of 383 tropical cyclones occurring during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, largely before the official hurricane record.

We demonstrate a novel way this archive can be used to articulate historical tropical cyclone activity across space. First, an event in the archive is assigned a series of latitude/longitude coordinates approximating the descriptive locations of the cyclone’s affect. Second, tropical cyclones from the modern record that approach these locations (modern analogs) are mapped. Third, a probable pathway and a realistic track of the archived event is created by averaging the modern analog tracks. As an example, the procedure is used to generate a map showing the tracks of the Atlantic tropical cyclones of 1766. Sensitivity of the methodology to changes in event location and event timing are considered.

Results show historical hurricane chronologies when combined with a history of cyclone tracks can provide new information about the older events not directly related to where the original information was gathered. When this new information is available for all cyclones it should help climatologists better understand long-term variations in tropical cyclone activity.

For more information see here.

A Climate Hurricane

A month after hackers broke into the CRU email server and released to the web email (it could have been a leak) correspondences between top climate researchers, what it all means is still being sorted. It apparently had little influence on the Copenhagen Summit as world leaders had momentum going in as well as other issues to sift through.

It is tempting to see the affair (dubbed climategate) as a small tempest on the otherwise tranquil sea of climate research--damaging perhaps to the scientists involved but lacking broader impacts. That would be a mistake. Limited in scope, though certainly broadcast widely, it reveals a suspicion scientists harbor about the research process that rarely gets articulated to a wider audience.

In my opinion the most important repercussion concerns scientific integrity. Climategate demonstrates that scientists can be quick to dismiss research ideas when they threaten their own. This can be relatively benign as rejecting/accepting a paper without careful review (editor's decide using multiple reviews) or worse when failing to cite the relevant literature undermining an essential scientific commitment to evaluating ideas on intellectual merit. It assumes a certainty of methods and ideas of one's own that's counter to the essential self-skepticism of the scientific enterprise. And it can be insidious when the behavior is passed on to a generation of students.

In basic fields, like particle physics, consequences of this type of behavior might decay rather quickly. In climate science where multiple plausible explanations are the norm as evidence is based on observations (not controlled experiments) and theory is incomplete or lacking, consequences have a much slower decay rate. And in a field with policy relevance, this can have a negative impact on the enterprise of science and thus on society as a whole.

The enduring lesson should be greater scientific integrity. Read and cite the relevant literature, analyze the data with proper tools, acknowledge the underlying assumptions, create information-rich graphs, write clearly, and most importantly, explain why you might be wrong.