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Tom Knutson – Research Interests
Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change:
- Crucial role of sea surface temperature warming patterns in near-term high-impact weather and climate projection. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2024) by Ming Zhao and T. Knutson.
- Global warming and hurricanes (Overview web page, Updated Jan. 25, 2024)
- An update on the influence of natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change on tropical cyclones. Tropical Cyclone Research and Review, 2023, by Camargo et al.
- Regulating fine-scale resolved convection in high-resolution models for better hurricane track prediction. Geophysical Research Letters, 2023, by Gao et al.
- On the role of sea surface temperature in the clustering of global tropical cyclone formation. Journal of Climate, 2023, by Kieu et al.
- North Atlantic tropical cyclone outer size and structure remain unchanged by the late twenty-first century. Journal of Climate, 2023, by Schenkel et al.
- Global increase in tropical cyclone rapid intensification. (Nature Communications, 2022) by Bhatia et al.
- Dynamical downscaling projections of late 21st century U.S. landfalling
hurricane activity (Climatic Change, 2022) by Knutson et al. View-only version here. Download full pre-publication version here.
- Why do eastern North Pacific hurricanes intensify more and faster than their western-counterpart typhoons with less ocean energy? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2022, by Moon et al.
- Machine learning based hurricane wind reconstruction. Weather and Forecasting, 2022 by Yang et al.
- Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late 19th century. (Nature Communications, 2021) by G. Vecchi, C. Landsea, W. Zhang, G. Villarini, and T. R. Knutson.
- A comparison of tropical cyclone projections in a high-resolution global climate model and from downscaling by statistical and statistical-deterministic methods. Journal of Climate, 2021, by Jing et al.
- ScienceBrief Review: Climate change is probably increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones. In Critical Issues in Climate Change Science, 2021, by Knutson et al.
- Tropical cyclone motion in a changing climate (Science Advances, 2020), by G. Zhang, et al.
- Causes of large projected increases in hurricane precipitation rates with global warming (npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 2019) by M. Liu et al.
- Tropical cyclone sensitivities to CO2 doubling: roles of atmospheric resolution, synoptic variability and background climate changes. (Climate Dynamics, 2019) by Vecchi et al.
- Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates. (Nature Communications, 2018) by Bhatia et al.
- Atlantic major hurricane frequency: Its recent decline and the role of the Atlantic overturning circulation. (Nature Communications, 2017) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson
- Impact of upper tropospheric temperature anomalies and vertical wind shear on tropical cyclone evolution using an idealized version of the operational GFDL hurricane model. (Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 2016) by R. Tuleya, M. Bender, T. Knutson, J. Sirutis, B. Thomas, and I. Ginis
- Intense tropical cyclone activity: Global projections for the late 21st century from dynamical downscaling of CMIP5/RCP4.5 scenarios (J. Climate, 2015).
- Projections of rainfall from U.S. landfalling tropical cyclones using regional models (Climate Dynamics, 2015), by D. Wright, T. Knutson, and J. Smith.
- Atlantic hurricane activity: 21st century dynamical downscaling projections using CMIP3 and CMIP5 models (J. Climate, 2013). See Research Highlight page (summary of article).
- Intense Atlantic hurricanes: modeled impact of anthropogenic warming on their frequency. Science, 2010, by M. Bender, T. Knutson, et al.)
- Past Atlantic hurricane activity: How well do we know it? A web site on adjusting for “missing storms” in the past Atlantic hurricane data. Adjusted datasets are available here, based on work by Vecchi and Knutson.
- Simulated hurricane animations web page
Detection and Attribution of Climate Change:
Climate Variability
- A Multivariate AMV Index and Associated Discrepancies Between Observed and CMIP5 Externally Forced AMV. Geophysical Research Letters (2019) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson.
- Underestimated AMOC Variability and Implications for AMV and Predictability in CMIP Models. Geophysical Research Letters (2018) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson
- Atlantic major hurricane frequency: Its recent decline and the role of the Atlantic overturning circulation. (Nature Communications, 2017) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson
- Multidecadal climate variability: Observed and simulated fingerprints, and their contributions to periods of global SST stagnation. Journal of Climate (2017) by M. Barcikowska, T. Knutson, and R. Zhang.
- Observed Barents Sea winter sea ice decline: On the discrepancy between observed and CMIP5 multi-model changes. Nature Communications (2017) by Dawei Li, Rong Zhang, and T. Knutson
- Global warming hiatus: prospects for a prolonged slowdown in global warming in the early 21st century. Nature Communications (2016). Supplemental Material.
- Early 20th century global warming: climate model simulations (Delworth and Knutson, Science, 2000)
- Tropical Pacific decadal variability and trends (Knutson and Manabe, J. Climate, 1998)
- Past Atlantic hurricane activity: How well do we know it? A web site on adjusting for “missing storms” in the past Atlantic hurricane data. Adjusted datasets are available here.
