Figure 1: Time series of late summer tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature (blue) and the Power Dissipation Index (green), a measure of hurricane activity which depends on the frequency, duration, and intensity of hurricanes over a season. The annual data have been smoothed with a low-pass filter to emphasize fluctuations on time scales of several years and longer. From Emanuel (2007)
Figure 2: Two different statistical models of Atlantic hurricane activity vs sea surface temperature (SST). The upper panel statistically models hurricane activity based on "local" tropical Atlantic SST, while the bottom panel statistically models hurricane activity based on tropical Atlantic SST relative to SST averaged over the remainder of the tropics.Both comparisons with historical data and future projections using this approach are shown. See Vecchi et al. 2008 for details.
Figure 3: Reconstruction of Atlantic tropical storms (1878 to current) with adjustments during the pre-satellite era (1878-1965) based on weather reporting ship track density in the Atlantic. Blue curve shows the adjustment for estimated number of missing storms. From
Vecchi and Knutson (2008)
Figure 4: Reconstruction of Atlantic tropical storms (1878 to current) with adjustments during the pre-satellite era (1878-1965) based on weather reporting ship track density in the Atlantic. Blue curve shows the adjustment for estimated number of missing storms. Source:
CCSP 3.3 (2008), Figure 2.17, page 60
Figure 5: Five-year running means of tropical Atlantic indices. Green
curves depict global annual-mean temperature anomalies (top) and August-
October Main Development Region (MDR) SST anomalies (second from top).
Blue curve shows unadjusted Atlantic hurricane counts. Red curve shows
adjusted Atlantic hurricane counts that include an estimate of ”missed”
hurricanes in the pre-satellite era. Orange curve depicts annual U.S.
landfalling hurricane counts. Bottom green curve depicts August-October
anomaly of MDR SST minus tropical mean SST. Vertical axis tic marks
denote one standard deviation intervals (shown by the σ symbol). Dashed
lines show linear trends. Only the top three curves have statistically
significant trends. Source: Journal of Climate, vol. 24, 1736-1746
(2011).
Figure 6: Simulated vs. observed Atlantic hurricane counts (Aug.-Oct) for 1980-2006 using the regional downscaling model of Knutson et
al. (2008)
Figure 7: Left: Distributions of wind speeds for Atlantic tropical storms and
hurricanes (August-October). Black curve shows observed distribution, blue curve
the simulated distribution for present day climate, and red curve the simulated
distribution for the late 21st century (IPCC A1B forcing scenario). The
strongest observed hurricane intensities are not reproduced by the model, and
there is a strong reduction in the number of storms in the warm climate
experiments, compared to the control (present day). There is an increase in the
number of the very strongest simulated storms in the warm climate, relative to
the control. Right: The normalized histogram (right) was obtained by dividing
the values from each curve on the left by the total number of storms observed or
simulated during the 27 yr period. This controls for differences in storm
frequency between the control and warming experiments or between the control and
observations. The storms that do occur in the warmer climate simulation are more
intense on average than those in the control (present day) simulation. From
Knutson et
al. (2008)
Figure 8: Tracks of simulated Atlantic Category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the present climate and for a warmer climate condition projected for the late 21st century. The hurricanes were simulated using higher resolution atmospheric models, with large-scale conditions taken from an ensemble of 18 global climate models. Source: Bender et al. 2010.
Figure
1 (old): Comparison of simulated hurricane intensities for present-day
(thin line) and future (thick line) climate conditions assuming an 80-year
build-up of atmospheric CO2 at 1%/yr compounded. The results are aggregated from
sets of experiments using nine different global climate model projections and
four different versions of a high-resolution hurricane prediction model.
Figure
2 (old): Top: a tropical storm as simulated in a global climate model.
Shown are surface temperature (shading), pressure and winds. Bottom: the same
storm case, but as simulated with the hurricane prediction model. Shown are
surface winds and precipitation on the inner grid of the hurricane model. The
vector spacing illustrates the resolution of the two models (250 km for the
global model vs. 18 km for the hurricane model.)
Figure
3 (old): Sea surface temperatures (SSTs, light contours and color
shading, in degrees Celsius) and sea level pressure (dark contours, in millibars)
from an idealized coupled hurricane model/ocean model experiment. The "cool
wake" in SSTs produced by the hurricane is indicated by the lower SSTs to the
east-southeast of the storm. The storm motion is toward the west-northwest.
