Assessing Tropical Cyclones’ Contribution to Precipitation over the Eastern United States and Sensitivity to the Variable-Resolution Domain Extent
Abstract
Tropical cyclones (TCs) can subject an area to heavy precipitation for many hours, or even days, worsening the risk of flooding, which creates dangerous conditions for residents of the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts. To study the representation of TC-related precipitation over the eastern United States in current-generation global climate models, a novel analysis methodology is developed to track TCs and extract their associated precipitation using an estimate of their dynamical outer size. This methodology is applied to three variable-resolution (VR) configurations of the Community Atmosphere Model, version 5 (CAM5), with high-resolution domains over the North Atlantic and one low-resolution conventional configuration, as well as to a combination of reanalysis and observational precipitation data. Metrics and diagnostics such as TC counts, intensities, outer storm sizes, and annual mean total and extreme precipitation are compared between the CAM5 simulations and reanalysis/observations. The high-resolution VR configurations outperform the global low-resolution configuration for all variables in the North Atlantic. Realistic TC intensities are produced by the VR configurations. The total North Atlantic TC counts are lower than observations but better than reanalysis.
- Authors:
-
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
- Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
- Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
- Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1803075
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0016605
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Hydrometeorology
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 21; Journal Issue: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 1525-755X
- Publisher:
- American Meteorological Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences; Precipitation; Tropical cyclones; Climatology; Climate models; Model evaluation/performance
Citation Formats
Stansfield, Alyssa M., Reed, Kevin A., Zarzycki, Colin M., Ullrich, Paul A., and Chavas, Daniel R. Assessing Tropical Cyclones’ Contribution to Precipitation over the Eastern United States and Sensitivity to the Variable-Resolution Domain Extent. United States: N. p., 2020.
Web. doi:10.1175/jhm-d-19-0240.1.
Stansfield, Alyssa M., Reed, Kevin A., Zarzycki, Colin M., Ullrich, Paul A., & Chavas, Daniel R. Assessing Tropical Cyclones’ Contribution to Precipitation over the Eastern United States and Sensitivity to the Variable-Resolution Domain Extent. United States. https://doi.org/10.1175/jhm-d-19-0240.1
Stansfield, Alyssa M., Reed, Kevin A., Zarzycki, Colin M., Ullrich, Paul A., and Chavas, Daniel R. Wed .
"Assessing Tropical Cyclones’ Contribution to Precipitation over the Eastern United States and Sensitivity to the Variable-Resolution Domain Extent". United States. https://doi.org/10.1175/jhm-d-19-0240.1. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1803075.
@article{osti_1803075,
title = {Assessing Tropical Cyclones’ Contribution to Precipitation over the Eastern United States and Sensitivity to the Variable-Resolution Domain Extent},
author = {Stansfield, Alyssa M. and Reed, Kevin A. and Zarzycki, Colin M. and Ullrich, Paul A. and Chavas, Daniel R.},
abstractNote = {Tropical cyclones (TCs) can subject an area to heavy precipitation for many hours, or even days, worsening the risk of flooding, which creates dangerous conditions for residents of the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts. To study the representation of TC-related precipitation over the eastern United States in current-generation global climate models, a novel analysis methodology is developed to track TCs and extract their associated precipitation using an estimate of their dynamical outer size. This methodology is applied to three variable-resolution (VR) configurations of the Community Atmosphere Model, version 5 (CAM5), with high-resolution domains over the North Atlantic and one low-resolution conventional configuration, as well as to a combination of reanalysis and observational precipitation data. Metrics and diagnostics such as TC counts, intensities, outer storm sizes, and annual mean total and extreme precipitation are compared between the CAM5 simulations and reanalysis/observations. The high-resolution VR configurations outperform the global low-resolution configuration for all variables in the North Atlantic. Realistic TC intensities are produced by the VR configurations. The total North Atlantic TC counts are lower than observations but better than reanalysis.},
doi = {10.1175/jhm-d-19-0240.1},
journal = {Journal of Hydrometeorology},
number = 7,
volume = 21,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020},
month = {Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020}
}
Works referenced in this record:
Exploratory High-Resolution Climate Simulations using the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM)
journal, May 2014
- Bacmeister, Julio T.; Wehner, Michael F.; Neale, Richard B.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 27, Issue 9
Forecasted attribution of the human influence on Hurricane Florence
journal, January 2020
- Reed, K. A.; Stansfield, A. M.; Wehner, M. F.
- Science Advances, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Effects of Localized Grid Refinement on the General Circulation and Climatology in the Community Atmosphere Model
journal, April 2015
- Zarzycki, Colin M.; Jablonowski, Christiane; Thatcher, Diana R.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 28, Issue 7
Using Variable-Resolution Meshes to Model Tropical Cyclones in the Community Atmosphere Model
journal, March 2014
- Zarzycki, Colin M.; Jablonowski, Christiane; Taylor, Mark A.
- Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 142, Issue 3
Global trends in tropical cyclone risk
journal, February 2012
- Peduzzi, P.; Chatenoux, B.; Dao, H.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 2, Issue 4
Exploring the Impact of Dust on North Atlantic Hurricanes in a High‐Resolution Climate Model
journal, January 2019
- Reed, Kevin A.; Bacmeister, Julio T.; Huff, J. Jacob A.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 46, Issue 2
Physical understanding of the tropical cyclone wind-pressure relationship
journal, November 2017
- Chavas, Daniel R.; Reed, Kevin A.; Knaff, John A.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Resolving Tropical Cyclone Intensity in Models
journal, February 2018
- Davis, C. A.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 4
Projected changes in tropical cyclone activity under future warming scenarios using a high-resolution climate model
journal, August 2016
- Bacmeister, Julio T.; Reed, Kevin A.; Hannay, Cecile
- Climatic Change, Vol. 146, Issue 3-4
A New Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Boundary Dataset for the Community Atmosphere Model
journal, October 2008
- Hurrell, James W.; Hack, James J.; Shea, Dennis
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 21, Issue 19
Sensitivity of Tropical Cyclone Rainfall to Idealized Global-Scale Forcings
journal, June 2014
- Villarini, Gabriele; Lavers, David A.; Scoccimarro, Enrico
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 27, Issue 12
A New Two-Moment Bulk Stratiform Cloud Microphysics Scheme in the Community Atmosphere Model, Version 3 (CAM3). Part I: Description and Numerical Tests
journal, August 2008
- Morrison, Hugh; Gettelman, Andrew
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 21, Issue 15
Robustness and sensitivities of central U.S. summer convection in the super-parameterized CAM: Multi-model intercomparison with a new regional EOF index: U.S. CONVECTION IN SP-CAM: A NEW EOF INDEX
journal, June 2013
- Kooperman, Gabriel J.; Pritchard, Michael S.; Somerville, Richard C. J.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 40, Issue 12
Hurricane Harvey Links to Ocean Heat Content and Climate Change Adaptation
journal, May 2018
- Trenberth, Kevin E.; Cheng, Lijing; Jacobs, Peter
- Earth's Future, Vol. 6, Issue 5
Uniformly rotating global radiative-convective equilibrium in the Community Atmosphere Model, version 5: UNIFORMLY ROTATING GLOBAL RCE
journal, December 2015
- Reed, Kevin A.; Chavas, Daniel R.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 7, Issue 4
CAM-SE: A scalable spectral element dynamical core for the Community Atmosphere Model
journal, November 2011
- Dennis, John M.; Edwards, Jim; Evans, Katherine J.
- The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, Vol. 26, Issue 1
Assessing the Uncertainty in Tropical Cyclone Simulations in NCAR's Community Atmosphere Model
journal, January 2011
- Reed, Kevin A.; Jablonowski, Christiane
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 3, Issue 8
Fatalities in the United States from Atlantic Tropical Cyclones: New Data and Interpretation
journal, March 2014
- Rappaport, Edward N.
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 95, Issue 3
Sensitivity of climate simulations to the parameterization of cumulus convection in the Canadian climate centre general circulation model
journal, September 1995
- Zhang, G. J.; McFarlane, Norman A.
- Atmosphere-Ocean, Vol. 33, Issue 3
Summarizing multiple aspects of model performance in a single diagram
journal, April 2001
- Taylor, Karl E.
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 106, Issue D7
Contribution of Tropical Cyclones to Rainfall at the Global Scale
journal, January 2017
- Khouakhi, Abdou; Villarini, Gabriele; Vecchi, Gabriel A.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 30, Issue 1
Resolution Dependence of Future Tropical Cyclone Projections of CAM5.1 in the U.S. CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group Idealized Configurations
journal, May 2015
- Wehner, Michael; Reed, Kevin A.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 28, Issue 10
Radiative transfer for inhomogeneous atmospheres: RRTM, a validated correlated-k model for the longwave
journal, July 1997
- Mlawer, Eli J.; Taubman, Steven J.; Brown, Patrick D.
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 102, Issue D14
Tropical cyclones in reanalysis data sets: Murakami: Tropical Cyclones in Reanalysis
journal, March 2014
- Murakami, Hiroyuki
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 41, Issue 6
Observed Tropical Cyclone Size Revisited
journal, April 2016
- Chavas, Daniel R.; Lin, Ning; Dong, Wenhao
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 29, Issue 8
Recent increases in U.S. heavy precipitation associated with tropical cyclones: HEAVY PRECIPITATION AND TROPICAL CYCLONES
journal, December 2010
- Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Easterling, David R.; Kristovich, David A. R.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 37, Issue 24
The Ocean’s Effect on the Intensity of Tropical Cyclones: Results from a Simple Coupled Atmosphere–Ocean Model
journal, February 1999
- Schade, Lars R.; Emanuel, Kerry A.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 56, Issue 4
Advancing global storm surge modelling using the new ERA5 climate reanalysis
journal, November 2019
- Dullaart, Job C. M.; Muis, Sanne; Bloemendaal, Nadia
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 54, Issue 1-2
Attributable Human-Induced Changes in the Likelihood and Magnitude of the Observed Extreme Precipitation during Hurricane Harvey: CHANGES IN EXTREME PRECIPITATION IN TX
journal, December 2017
- Risser, Mark D.; Wehner, Michael F.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 44, Issue 24
Quantifying the contribution of tropical cyclones to extreme rainfall along the coastal southeastern United States: CONTRIBUTION OF TROPICAL CYCLONES TO RAINFALL
journal, December 2007
- Shepherd, J. Marshall; Grundstein, Andrew; Mote, Thomas L.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 23
Integrating Cloud Processes in the Community Atmosphere Model, Version 5
journal, September 2014
- Park, Sungsu; Bretherton, Christopher S.; Rasch, Philip J.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 27, Issue 18
Understanding, modeling and predicting weather and climate extremes: Challenges and opportunities
journal, December 2017
- Sillmann, Jana; Thorarinsdottir, Thordis; Keenlyside, Noel
- Weather and Climate Extremes, Vol. 18
Long term changes in flooding and heavy rainfall associated with North Atlantic tropical cyclones: Roles of the North Atlantic Oscillation and El Niño-Southern Oscillation
journal, April 2018
- Aryal, Yog N.; Villarini, Gabriele; Zhang, Wei
- Journal of Hydrology, Vol. 559
Evaluating Outer Tropical Cyclone Size in Reanalysis Datasets Using QuikSCAT Data
journal, November 2017
- Schenkel, Benjamin A.; Lin, Ning; Chavas, Daniel
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 30, Issue 21
The effect of horizontal resolution on simulation quality in the Community Atmospheric Model, CAM5.1
journal, November 2014
- Wehner, Michael F.; Reed, Kevin A.; Li, Fuyu
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 6, Issue 4
Dynamical Downscaling Projections of Twenty-First-Century Atlantic Hurricane Activity: CMIP3 and CMIP5 Model-Based Scenarios
journal, September 2013
- Knutson, Thomas R.; Sirutis, Joseph J.; Vecchi, Gabriel A.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 17
Understanding and simulating the link between African easterly waves and Atlantic tropical cyclones using a regional climate model: the role of domain size and lateral boundary conditions
journal, August 2011
- Caron, Louis-Philippe; Jones, Colin G.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 39, Issue 1-2
Attribution of extreme rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, August 2017
journal, December 2017
- van Oldenborgh, Geert Jan; van der Wiel, Karin; Sebastian, Antonia
- Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 12
Characteristics of tropical cyclones in high‐resolution models in the present climate
journal, December 2014
- Shaevitz, Daniel A.; Camargo, Suzana J.; Sobel, Adam H.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 6, Issue 4
A Model for the Complete Radial Structure of the Tropical Cyclone Wind Field. Part I: Comparison with Observed Structure*
journal, September 2015
- Chavas, Daniel R.; Lin, Ning; Emanuel, Kerry
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 72, Issue 9
A QuikSCAT climatology of tropical cyclone size: TROPICAL CYCLONE SIZE DISTRIBUTION
journal, September 2010
- Chavas, D. R.; Emanuel, K. A.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 37, Issue 18
Continental U.S. Hurricane Landfall Frequency and Associated Damage: Observations and Future Risks
journal, July 2018
- Klotzbach, Philip J.; Bowen, Steven G.; Pielke, Roger
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 99, Issue 7
Meteorological Causes of the Secular Variations in Observed Extreme Precipitation Events for the Conterminous United States
journal, June 2012
- Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Easterling, David R.; Kristovich, David A. R.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 13, Issue 3
Revisiting the connection between African Easterly Waves and Atlantic tropical cyclogenesis: EASTERLY WAVES AND TROPICAL CYCLONES
journal, January 2017
- Russell, James O.; Aiyyer, Anantha; White, Joshua D.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 44, Issue 1
The impact of climate change on global tropical cyclone damage
journal, January 2012
- Mendelsohn, Robert; Emanuel, Kerry; Chonabayashi, Shun
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 2, Issue 3
North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones and U.S. Flooding
journal, September 2014
- Villarini, Gabriele; Goska, Radoslaw; Smith, James A.
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 95, Issue 9
The Spectral Element Method for the Shallow Water Equations on the Sphere
journal, January 1997
- Taylor, Mark; Tribbia, Joseph; Iskandarani, Mohamed
- Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 130, Issue 1
Size and Strength of Tropical Cyclones as Inferred from QuikSCAT Data
journal, March 2012
- Chan, Kelvin T. F.; Chan, Johnny C. L.
- Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 140, Issue 3
Precipitation Contribution of Tropical Cyclones in the Southeastern United States from 1998 to 2009 Using TRMM Satellite Data
journal, February 2013
- Prat, Olivier P.; Nelson, Brian R.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 3
Sensitivity of Simulated Tropical Cyclone Structure and Intensity to Horizontal Resolution
journal, March 2010
- Gentry, Megan S.; Lackmann, Gary M.
- Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 138, Issue 3
Changes in Hurricanes from a 13-Yr Convection-Permitting Pseudo–Global Warming Simulation
journal, May 2018
- Gutmann, Ethan D.; Rasmussen, Roy M.; Liu, Changhai
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 31, Issue 9
Radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases: Calculations with the AER radiative transfer models
journal, January 2008
- Iacono, Michael J.; Delamere, Jennifer S.; Mlawer, Eli J.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 113, Issue D13
How Well Are Tropical Cyclones Represented in Reanalysis Datasets?
journal, July 2017
- Hodges, Kevin; Cobb, Alison; Vidale, Pier Luigi
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 30, Issue 14
An Examination of Tropical Cyclone Position, Intensity, and Intensity Life Cycle within Atmospheric Reanalysis Datasets
journal, May 2012
- Schenkel, Benjamin A.; Hart, Robert E.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 25, Issue 10
Objectively Determined Resolution-Dependent Threshold Criteria for the Detection of Tropical Cyclones in Climate Models and Reanalyses
journal, May 2007
- Walsh, K. J. E.; Fiorino, M.; Landsea, C. W.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 20, Issue 10
Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events
journal, November 2018
- Patricola, Christina M.; Wehner, Michael F.
- Nature, Vol. 563, Issue 7731
Impacts of vortex intensity and outer winds on tropical cyclone size
journal, May 2014
- Chan, Kelvin T. F.; Chan, Johnny C. L.
- Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 141, Issue 687
Dynamical Aquaplanet Experiments with Uniform Thermal Forcing: System Dynamics and Implications for Tropical Cyclone Genesis and Size
journal, July 2019
- Chavas, Daniel R.; Reed, Kevin A.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 76, Issue 8
Assessing the present and future probability of Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall
journal, November 2017
- Emanuel, Kerry
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 114, Issue 48
TempestExtremes: a framework for scale-insensitive pointwise feature tracking on unstructured grids
journal, January 2017
- Ullrich, Paul A.; Zarzycki, Colin M.
- Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 10, Issue 3
Initial Maintenance of Tropical Cyclone Size in the Western North Pacific
journal, August 2010
- Lee, Cheng-Shang; Cheung, Kevin K. W.; Fang, Wei-Ting
- Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 138, Issue 8
Tropical cyclones in the spectral element configuration of the Community Atmosphere Model
journal, August 2012
- Reed, Kevin A.; Jablonowski, Christiane; Taylor, Mark A.
- Atmospheric Science Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 4
Assessing sensitivities in algorithmic detection of tropical cyclones in climate data: SENSITIVITIES IN ALGORITHMIC TC TRACKING
journal, January 2017
- Zarzycki, Colin M.; Ullrich, Paul A.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 44, Issue 2
AMIP: The Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project
journal, December 1992
- Gates, W. Lawrence
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 73, Issue 12
Contribution of Tropical Cyclones to the Global Precipitation from Eight Seasons of TRMM Data: Regional, Seasonal, and Interannual Variations
journal, March 2010
- Jiang, Haiyan; Zipser, Edward J.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 23, Issue 6
Impact of the dynamical core on the direct simulation of tropical cyclones in a high-resolution global model: DYNAMICAL CORE IMPACT ON TC ACTIVITY
journal, May 2015
- Reed, K. A.; Bacmeister, J. T.; Rosenbloom, N. A.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 42, Issue 9
The Response of Atlantic Tropical Cyclones to Suppression of African Easterly Waves
journal, January 2018
- Patricola, Christina M.; Saravanan, R.; Chang, Ping
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 1
Tropical Cyclones in the UPSCALE Ensemble of High-Resolution Global Climate Models
journal, January 2015
- Roberts, Malcolm J.; Vidale, Pier Luigi; Mizielinski, Matthew S.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 28, Issue 2
A Comparison of Large and Small Tropical Cyclones
journal, July 1984
- Merrill, Robert T.
- Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 112, Issue 7
High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP v1.0) for CMIP6
journal, January 2016
- Haarsma, Reindert J.; Roberts, Malcolm J.; Vidale, Pier Luigi
- Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 9, Issue 11