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Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone activity
Author(s) -
Maue Ryan N.
Publication year - 2009
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 - 10.1029/2008gl035946
Subject(s) - climatology , tropical cyclone , ocean gyre , context (archaeology) , northern hemisphere , sea surface temperature , southern hemisphere , boreal , oceanography , environmental science , el niño southern oscillation , cyclone (programming language) , climate change , geology , subtropics , paleontology , field programmable gate array , fishery , computer science , computer hardware , biology
Recent historical Northern Hemisphere (NH) tropical cyclone (TC) inactivity is compared with strikingly large observed variability during the past three decades. Yearly totals of the combined active‐basin NH accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) are highly correlated with boreal spring sea‐surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific Ocean and are representative of an evolving dual‐gyre, trans‐hemispheric correlation pattern throughout the calendar year. The observed offsetting nature of Eastern Pacific and North Atlantic basin ACE during the past three decades and a strong dependence of combined Pacific TC activity upon the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation reflect the interrelated modulation of overall NH integrated TC energy by large‐scale modes of climate variability. Thus, the quiescent period of overall integrated NH TC ACE continuing throughout 2008 is not unexpected in the context of previous periods of colder Pacific SSTs.