Observations of pre-1950 tropical cyclones are sparse due to observational limitations; therefore, the hurricane database HURDAT2 (1851-present) maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may be incomplete. Here we provide additional documentation for HURDAT2 from historical United States Army fort records (1820-1915) and other archived documents for 28 landfalling tropic...

The number of tropical cyclones observed in the Australian region (south of equator; 105-160~ has apparently declined since the start of reliable (satellite) observations in the 1969/70 season. However, the number of more intense cyclones (with minimum pressures dropping to 970 hPa or lower) has increased slightly. The numbers of weak (minimum pressures not dropping below 990 hPa) and moderate ...

Southeast China is frequently hit by tropical cyclones (TCs) with significant economic and health burdens each year. However, there is a lack of understanding of what infectious diseases could be affected by tropical cyclones. This study aimed to examine the impacts of tropical cyclones on notifiable infectious diseases in southeast China. Disease data between 2005 and 2011 from four coastal pr...

[1] The heavy winds associated with tropical cyclones generate strong upper ocean mixing. Recent studies suggest that this enhanced mixing significantly contributes to the ocean poleward heat transport, mainly due to a strengthening of the subtropical cells. A general circulation model is used here to show that whether the poleward heat transport is actually increased depends crucially on the l...

Personal experience can influence our attitudes and actions concerning climate change. This paper examines the experience-perception link in relation to tropical cyclones using a distinctly revealed preference approach, mitigating biases of prior research in this area. Specifically, we study how people alter their internet searches related to climate change in response to tropical cyclones. Usi...

We present TECA, a parallel toolkit for detecting extreme events in large climate datasets. Modern climate datasets expose parallelism across a number of dimensions: spatial locations, timesteps and ensemble members. We design TECA to exploit these modes of parallelism and demonstrate a prototype implementation for detecting and tracking three classes of extreme events: tropical cyclones, extra...

Global natural disaster losses have risen dramatically in recent decades and tropical cyclones have contributed significantly to this trend. Tropical cyclones account for nine of the ten most costly inflation-adjusted insurance natural disaster losses (2009 dollars) between 1970 and 2009 (Swiss Re, 2010). Of these nine, eight impacted the US and surrounding areas and one impacted Japan. In orig...

Detection and attribution of past changes in cyclone activity are hampered by biased cyclone records due to changes in observational capabilities. Here we construct an independent record of Atlantic tropical cyclone activity on the basis of storm surge statistics from tide gauges. We demonstrate that the major events in our surge index record can be attributed to landfalling tropical cyclones; ...

10 The global network of subsea fibre-optic cables plays a critical role in the world economy and is 11 considered as strategic infrastructure for many nations. Sediment density flows have caused 12 significant disruption to this network in the recent past. These cable breaks represent the only 13 means to actively monitor such flows over large oceanic regions. Here, we use a global cable break...

Tropical cyclones—variously defined as hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones—regularly impact human populations and periodically produce devastating weather-related natural disasters. The epidemiology of tropical cyclones is fundamentally determined by the physical forces of massive cyclonic systems intersecting with patterns of human behavior. The destructive forces of cyclonic winds, inundating ...