Global scale climate trends associated with variable Atlantic thermohaline transport as inferred from changes in intense hurricane activity

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:535149

Gray, W M; Sheaffer, J D ^[1]

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1. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)

This paper presents a review of the most recent 100 years of data of hurricane activity in the tropical Atlantic, and proposes that decadal variations of hurricane activity are but one of a host of observed concurrent global climate trends which may all link to multi-decadal scale variations of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. The data reviews shows that long term multi-decadal variations in hurricane activity appear to be linked (1) to mode-like variations of regional and global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and (2) to concurrent trends in global air temperature, pressure anomalies, and atmospheric circulations. Many of these effects extend well beyond the tropical Atlantic. The pre-eminent effect which seems to dominate all others as a unifying process for these multi-decadal changes is variations in the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. A synthesis process is suggested for specifying physically consistent global interactions linking the Atlantic conveyor and decadal trend associations in global climate data. In this way, some of the global data may yield factors which are useful for forecasting the onset and termination of new decadal trends of hurricane activity. 30 refs., 4 figs.

• OSTI ID: 535149
• Report Number(s): CONF-960146--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ATLANTIC OCEAN
CLIMATIC CHANGE
FORECASTING
HEAT TRANSFER
HURRICANES
OCEANIC CIRCULATION
SALINITY
VARIATIONS