Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios

Timmermans, Ben; Patricola, Christina; Wehner, Michael

doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.218

Title: Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios

Abstract

Ocean wave climate is an important area of research, particularly in the context of extremes driven by tropical cyclones (TC). We can now simulate global climate at resolutions sufficient to resolve TCs and for durations long enough to explore climatological changes. Both the devastating 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season and growing evidence for the connection between TC activity and increasing ocean temperature motivate investigation of possible future changes. We present two simulated 50-year global wave climate data sets under possible future warming scenarios characterized by +1.5°C and +2.0°C stabilized global mean temperatures that capture the effects of TCs. Differences in extreme wave climate between these possible scenarios and present-day conditions appear to be significant in many areas, particularly those affected by TCs. However, for computational feasibility, simulations of this kind rely on fixed sea surface temperatures, so we also investigate and elucidate effects from the lack of a dynamic ocean by simulating waves from a number of recent hurricanes and comparing output to observations. We conclude that atmosphere-only forcing is likely to result in an overestimate of extreme wind speeds and wave heights in TC-affected regions. More ensemble studies are needed to help elucidate detailed processes relevant to extreme wavemore »« less

Authors:

Timmermans, Ben ^[1]; Patricola, Christina ^[1]; Wehner, Michael ^[1]

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Publication Date:: Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018

Research Org.:: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

OSTI Identifier:: 1526525

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

Resource Type:: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: Oceanography

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Volume: 31; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 1042-8275

Publisher:: The Oceanography Society

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 58 GEOSCIENCES; 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Citation Formats


                    Timmermans, Ben, Patricola, Christina, and Wehner, Michael. Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios.  United States: N. p., 2018. 
Web.  doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.218.

Copy to clipboard


                    Timmermans, Ben, Patricola, Christina, & Wehner, Michael. Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios.  United States.  https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2018.218

Copy to clipboard


                    Timmermans, Ben, Patricola, Christina, and Wehner, Michael. Fri .  
"Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios".  United States.  https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2018.218.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1526525.

Copy to clipboard


                    
@article{osti_1526525,

  title        = {Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios},

  author       = {Timmermans, Ben and Patricola, Christina and Wehner, Michael},

  abstractNote = {Ocean wave climate is an important area of research, particularly in the context of extremes driven by tropical cyclones (TC). We can now simulate global climate at resolutions sufficient to resolve TCs and for durations long enough to explore climatological changes. Both the devastating 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season and growing evidence for the connection between TC activity and increasing ocean temperature motivate investigation of possible future changes. We present two simulated 50-year global wave climate data sets under possible future warming scenarios characterized by +1.5°C and +2.0°C stabilized global mean temperatures that capture the effects of TCs. Differences in extreme wave climate between these possible scenarios and present-day conditions appear to be significant in many areas, particularly those affected by TCs. However, for computational feasibility, simulations of this kind rely on fixed sea surface temperatures, so we also investigate and elucidate effects from the lack of a dynamic ocean by simulating waves from a number of recent hurricanes and comparing output to observations. We conclude that atmosphere-only forcing is likely to result in an overestimate of extreme wind speeds and wave heights in TC-affected regions. More ensemble studies are needed to help elucidate detailed processes relevant to extreme wave climate, and important community projects such as the Coordinated Wave Climate Intercomparison Project (COWCLIP) should be supported.},

  doi          = {10.5670/oceanog.2018.218},

  journal      = {Oceanography},

  number       = 2,

  volume       = 31,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018},

  month        = {Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018}

}

Copy to clipboard

Journal Article:

Free Publicly Available Full Text

Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Publisher's Version of Record

https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2018.218

Other availability

Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal

Citation Metrics:

Cited by: 1 work

Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Export Metadata

Save to My Library

Works referencing / citing this record:

Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events
journal, November 2018

Patricola, Christina M.; Wehner, Michael F.
Nature, Vol. 563, Issue 7731
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0673-2

Similar Records in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV collections:

A KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY STRATEGY FOR RELATING SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES TO FREQUENCIES OF TROPICAL STORMS AND GENERATING PREDICTIONS OF HURRICANES UNDER 21ST-CENTURY GLOBAL WARMING SCENARIOS

Conference Race, Caitlin ; Steinbach, Michael ; Ganguly, Auroop R ; ...

The connections among greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios, global warming, and frequencies of hurricanes or tropical cyclones are among the least understood in climate science but among the most fiercely debated in the context of adaptation decisions or mitigation policies. Here we show that a knowledge discovery strategy, which leverages observations and climate model simulations, offers the promise of developing credible projections of tropical cyclones based on sea surface temperatures (SST) in a warming environment. While this study motivates the development of new methodologies in statistics and data mining, the ability to solve challenging climate science problems with innovative combinations of traditionalmore »« less
Seamless Projections of Global Storm Surge and Ocean Waves Under a Warming Climate

Journal Article Shimura, T. ; Pringle, W. J. ; Mori, N. ; ... - Geophysical Research Letters

For coastal adaptation purposes, it is important to estimate the climate related changes in extreme sea levels due to storm surges and ocean waves, in addition to mean sea level rise. In this study, we provide the first consistent and continuous estimation of projected changes in global storm surges and ocean waves from the past to the warmer future, based on an extremely high resolution global climate model. The spatial pattern in the trend of annual maximum sea surface heights and wave heights is predominantly driven by changes in tropical cyclone (TC) frequency. In the western North Pacific, future TCmore »« less
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021gl097427

Full Text Available
A storyline analysis of Hurricane Irma’s precipitation under various levels of climate warming

Journal Article Huprikar, Annika S. ; Stansfield, Alyssa M. ; Reed, Kevin A. - Environmental Research Letters

Abstract Understanding how extreme weather, such as tropical cyclones, will change with future climate warming is an interesting computational challenge. Here, the hindcast approach is used to create different storylines of a particular tropical cyclone, Hurricane Irma (2017). Using the community atmosphere model, we explore how Irma’s precipitation would change under various levels of climate warming. Analysis is focused on a 48 h period where the simulated hurricane tracks reasonably represent Irma’s observed track. Under future scenarios of 2 K, 3 K, and 4 K global average surface temperature increase above pre-industrial levels, the mean 3-hourly rainfall rates in the simulated storms increase bymore »« less
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0c89
Hurricanes and Climate: The U.S. CLIVAR Working Group on Hurricanes

Journal Article Walsh, Kevin J. E. ; Camargo, Suzana J. ; Vecchi, Gabriel A. ; ... - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

While a quantitative climate theory of tropical cyclone formation remains elusive, considerable progress has been made recently in our ability to simulate tropical cyclone climatologies and to understand the relationship between climate and tropical cyclone formation. Climate models are now able to simulate a realistic rate of global tropical cyclone formation, although simulation of the Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology remains challenging unless horizontal resolutions finer than 50 km are employed. This article summarizes published research from the idealized experiments of the Hurricane Working Group of U.S. Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change (CLIVAR). This work, combined with results frommore »« less
Cited by 136
https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00242.1

Full Text Available
Exploring the Impact of Dust on North Atlantic Hurricanes in a High-Resolution Climate Model

Journal Article Reed, Kevin A. ; Bacmeister, Julio T. ; Huff, J. Jacob A. ; ... - Geophysical Research Letters

Herein the relationship between African dust and the climatology of tropical cyclones (TCs) in the North Atlantic is explored using the Community Atmosphere Model at a global horizontal resolution of 28 km. A simulation in which the aerosol model is modified to significantly reduce the amount of airborne dust is compared to a standard simulation. The simulation with reduced dust increases TC frequency globally, with the largest increase occurring in the North Atlantic. The increase in TC activity in the North Atlantic is consistent with an environment that is more conducive for the genesis and intensification of storms. TCs aremore »« less
Cited by 18
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gl080642

Full Text Available

Similar Records

Title: Simulation and Analysis of Hurricane-Driven Extreme Wave Climate Under Two Ocean Warming Scenarios

Abstract

Citation Formats

Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events journal, November 2018

Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events
journal, November 2018