Environmental Control of Tropical Cyclone Intensity

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Abstract
The influence of various environmental factors on tropical cyclone intensity is explored using a simple coupled ocean–atmosphere model. It is first demonstrated that this model is capable of accurately replicating the intensity evolution of storms that move over oceans whose upper thermal structure is not far from monthly mean climatology and that are relatively unaffected by environmental wind shear. A parameterization of the effects of environmental wind shear is then developed and shown to work reasonably well in several cases for which the magnitude of the shear is relatively well known. When used for real-time forecasting guidance, the model is shown to perform better than other existing numerical models while being competitive with statistical methods. In the context of a limited number of case studies, the model is used to explore the sensitivity of storm intensity to its initialization and to a number of environmental factors, including potential intensity, storm track, wind shear, upper-... Abstract The influence of various environmental factors on tropical cyclone intensity is explored using a simple coupled ocean–atmosphere model. It is first demonstrated that this model is capable of accurately replicating the intensity evolution of storms that move over oceans whose upper thermal structure is not far from monthly mean climatology and that are relatively unaffected by environmental wind shear. A parameterization of the effects of environmental wind shear is then developed and shown to work reasonably well in several cases for which the magnitude of the shear is relatively well known. When used for real-time forecasting guidance, the model is shown to perform better than other existing numerical models while being competitive with statistical methods. In the context of a limited number of case studies, the model is used to explore the sensitivity of storm intensity to its initialization and to a number of environmental factors, including potential intensity, storm track, wind shear, upper-...