Cyclone

About: Cyclone is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6030 publications have been published within this topic receiving 133616 citations. The topic is also known as: 🌀 & cyclones.

Changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity in a warming environment.

Abstract: We examined the number of tropical cyclones and cyclone days as well as tropical cyclone intensity over the past 35 years, in an environment of increasing sea surface temperature. A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5. The largest increase occurred in the North Pacific, Indian, and Southwest Pacific Oceans, and the smallest percentage increase occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean. These increases have taken place while the number of cyclones and cyclone days has decreased in all basins except the North Atlantic during the past decade.

Tropical cyclones and climate change

Abstract: Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have altered, or will alter, in a changing climate has been subject of considerable debate. An overview of recent research indicates that greenhouse warming will cause stronger storms, on average, but a decrease in the frequency of tropical cyclones. Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies.

On the Growth of the Hurricane Depression

Abstract: Why do cyclones form in a conditionally unstable tropical atmosphere whose vertical thermal structure is apparently more favorable to small-scale cumulus convection than to convective circulations of tropical cyclone scale? It is proposed that the cyclone develops by a kind of secondary instability in which existing cumulus convection is augmented in regions of low-level horizontal convergence and quenched in regions of low-level divergence. The cumulus- and cyclone-scale motions are thus to be regarded as cooperating rather than as competing–the clouds supplying latent heat energy to the cyclone, and the cyclone supplying the fuel, in the form of moisture, to the clouds. A scale-analysis indicates that it is appropriate to use the balance equations of Eliassen for the macro-motion; in this case the effect of friction in the boundary-layer may be incorporated as a condition on the vertical velocity at the top of the boundary layer. It is argued that the mean humidity in a system of convecting cum...

Tropical Cyclone Intensity Analysis and Forecasting from Satellite Imagery

Abstract: A technique for using satellite pictures to analyse and forecast tropical cyclone intensifies is described. The cloud features used to estimate the cyclone's intensity and its future change of intensity are described. Procedures for interpreting cloud characteristics and their day-by-day changes within the guidance and constraints of an empirical model of tropical cyclone changes are outlined.

Numerical Simulation of the Life Cycle of Tropical Cyclones

Abstract: The tropical cyclone is a solitary creature of the tropical oceans accompanied by violent rotating winds and torrential rain. Observational studies and diagnostic analyses leave little doubt that the energy required for driving the vortex comes from the latent heat of condensation released by tall convective clouds around the center, and that the frictionally induced inflow in the vortex plays a major role in supporting the continued activity of convective clouds. This dual character with respect to important scales of motion poses a great difficulty in investigating the dynamics of tropical cyclones as time-dependent phenomena. However, in order to understand the large-scale aspects of tropical cyclones, one may formulate the role of convective clouds in terms of cyclone-scale variables with only implicit consideration of the dynamics of individual clouds. The present study is an attempt to understand the basic mechanism of tropical cyclones by constructing a numerical-dynamical model on such a ...