The influence of oceanic changes on tropical cyclone activity is investigated using observational estimates of sea surface temperature (SST), air–sea fluxes, and ocean subsurface thermal structure during the period 1998– 2007. SST conditions are examined before, during, and after the passage of tropical cyclones, through Lagrangian composites along cyclone tracks across all ocean basins, with p...

Tropical storms, such as cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, present major threats to coastal communities. Around two million people worldwide have died and millions have been injured over the past two centuries as a result of tropical storms. Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to tropical cyclones, with around 718 000 deaths from them in the past 50 years. However, cyclone-related mortality in...

Tropical cyclones are relatively rare weather events, yet they consistently rank among the world’s deadliest and costliest natural hazards. In the United States, tropical cyclones account for nearly $10 billion annually in economic damages (1), and damages from Hurricane Sandy (2012) are estimated to be over $50 billion. Understanding the role of these events within Earth’s climate system is of...

OBJECTIVE Guangdong province is one of the most vulnerable provinces to tropical cyclones in China. Most prior studies concentrated on the relationship between tropical cyclones and injuries and mortality. This study aimed to explore the impacts of different grades of tropical cyclones on infectious diarrhea incidence in Guangdong province, from 2005 to 2011. METHODS Mann-Whitney U test was f...

Tropical cyclogenesis is attributed to an equatorial wave when the filtered rainfall anomaly exceeds a threshold value at the genesis location. It is argued that 0 mm day (simply requiring a positive anomaly) is too small a threshold because unrelated noise can produce a positive anomaly. A threshold of 6 mm day is too large because two-thirds of storms would have no precursor disturbance. Betw...

A numerical experiment for the study of the development and the structure of tropical cyclones is performed with a 13-layer model. The total amount of latent heat released in a vertical column of air is specified by the horizontal mass convergence in the friction layer, as proposed by Ooyama (1964) . The vertical distribution of released latent heat is assumed to be proportional to the temperat...

High-vertical-resolution rawinsondes were used to document the existence of low–bulk Richardson number (Rb) layers in tropical cyclones. The largest frequency of low Rb existed in the inner 200 km at the 13.5-km level. This peak extended more than 1000 km from the storm center and sloped downward with radius. The presence of an extensive upper-tropospheric low-Rb layer supports the assumption o...

The specific objectives of the current effort are: 1. To continue our study of the dynamical processes in tropical cyclones responsible for looping or erratic motion; 2. To continue the development of methods for (a) the introduction of synthetic tropical-cyclone-scale vortices in operational forecast models and (b) ensemble forecasting of tropical cyclones; 3. To continue a sensitivity study o...

[1] The record of past tropical cyclones provides an important means to evaluate the hurricane hazard. Historical chronologies are a source of information about tropical cyclones prior to the modern era. Chenoweth (2006) describes an archive of 383 tropical cyclones occurring during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, largely before the official hurricane record. The present study demonstr...

In temperate forests of the eastern US, tropical cyclones are a principal agent of catastrophic wind damage, with dramatic impacts on the structure and functioning of forests. Substantial progress has been made to quantify forest damage and resulting gross carbon emissions from tropical cyclones. However, the net effect of storms on the carbon balance of forests depends not only on the biomass ...