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Title: Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events

Journal Article · · Nature (London)
 [1];  [2]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Computational Research Division
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There is no consensus on whether climate change has yet affected the statistics of tropical cyclones, owing to their large natural variability and the limited period of consistent observations. In addition, projections of future tropical cyclone activity are uncertain, because they often rely on coarse-resolution climate models that parameterize convection and hence have difficulty in directly representing tropical cyclones. Here we used convection-permitting regional climate model simulations to investigate whether and how recent destructive tropical cyclones would change if these events had occurred in pre-industrial and in future climates. We found that, relative to pre-industrial conditions, climate change so far has enhanced the average and extreme rainfall of hurricanes Katrina, Irma and Maria, but did not change tropical cyclone wind-speed intensity. In addition, future anthropogenic warming would robustly increase the wind speed and rainfall of 11 of 13 intense tropical cyclones (of 15 events sampled globally). Additional regional climate model simulations suggest that convective parameterization introduces minimal uncertainty into the sign of projected changes in tropical cyclone intensity and rainfall, which allows us to have confidence in projections from global models with parameterized convection and resolution fine enough to include tropical cyclones.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1526550
Journal Information:
Nature (London), Vol. 563, Issue 7731; ISSN 0028-0836
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 184 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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2018 Continues Record Global Ocean Warming journal January 2019
Tropical cyclone sensitivities to CO2 doubling: roles of atmospheric resolution, synoptic variability and background climate changes journal August 2019
Thirty Years of Regional Climate Modeling: Where Are We and Where Are We Going next? journal June 2019
Extreme Rainfall Associated With Hurricane Maria Over Puerto Rico and Its Connections to Climate Variability and Change journal March 2019
Variations in the Intensity and Spatial Extent of Tropical Cyclone Precipitation journal December 2019
Trends in Compound Flooding in Northwestern Europe During 1901–2014 journal October 2019
Tropical Sand Cays as Natural Paleocyclone Archives journal August 2019
Coastal Inundation Mapping From Bitemporal and Dual‐Polarization SAR Imagery Based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks journal December 2019
Why extreme rains are gaining strength as the climate warms journal November 2018
Hurricane María’s Precipitation Signature in Puerto Rico: A Conceivable Presage of Rains to Come journal October 2019
Causes of large projected increases in hurricane precipitation rates with global warming journal October 2019
A Meta-Cognitive Approach to Predicting Hurricane Evacuation Behavior journal November 2019
Interacting implications of climate change, population dynamics, and urban heat mitigation for future exposure to heat extremes journal August 2019
Tropical cyclones and the organization of mangrove forests: a review journal October 2019
Climatic and local stressor interactions threaten tropical forests and coral reefs
  • França, Filipe M.; Benkwitt, Cassandra E.; Peralta, Guadalupe
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 375, Issue 1794 https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0116
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Forecasted attribution of the human influence on Hurricane Florence journal January 2020
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