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On the factors affecting trends and variability in tropical cyclone potential intensity
Author(s) -
Wing Allison A.,
Emanuel Kerry,
Solomon Susan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl066145
Subject(s) - tropical cyclone , climatology , environmental science , sea surface temperature , outflow , structural basin , intensity (physics) , atmospheric sciences , geology , oceanography , quantum mechanics , paleontology , physics
Tropical cyclone potential intensity ( V p ) is controlled by thermodynamic air‐sea disequilibrium and thermodynamic efficiency, which is a function of the sea surface temperature and the tropical cyclone's outflow temperature. Observed trends and variability in V p in each ocean basin are decomposed into contributions from these two components. Robustly detectable trends are found only in the North Atlantic, where tropical tropopause layer (TTL) cooling contributes up to a third of the increase in V p . The contribution from disequilibrium dominates the few statistically significant V p trends in the other basins. The results are sensitive to the data set used and details of the V p calculation, reflecting uncertainties in TTL temperature trends and the difficulty of estimating V p and its components. We also find that 20–71% of the interannual variability in V p is linked to the TTL, with correlations between detrended time series of thermodynamic efficiency and V p occurring over all ocean basins.