Impact of SSTA in the East Indian Ocean on the frequency of Northwest Pacific tropical cyclones: A regional atmospheric model study
Journal
Journal of Climate
Journal Volume
24
Journal Issue
23
Pages
6227-6242
Date Issued
2011
Author(s)
Abstract
The impact of the sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) in the East Indian Ocean (EIO) on the tropical cyclone (TC) frequency over the western North Pacific (WNP) and the involved physical mechanisms are examined using the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) Regional Atmospheric Model (iRAM) driven by the reanalysis and the observed SSTs. The model reproduces generally quite realistic climatic features of the WNP TC activity, including the interannual variability of the WNP TC genesis frequency, the geographical distributions of TC genesis and frequency of occurrence. In particular, the model reproduces the observed statistical (negatively correlated) relationship between the WNP TC frequency and the EIO SSTA, as recently studied by Zhan et al. The experiments with artificially imposed SSTA in the EIO in the year 2004 with normal EIO SST and WNPTC activity confirm that the EIO SSTA does affect the TC genesis frequency in the entire genesis region over the WNP by significantly modulating both the western Pacific summer monsoon and the equatorial Kelvin wave activity over the western Pacific, two major large-scale dynamical controls of TC genesis over the WNP. Additional sensitivity experiments are performed for two extreme years: one (1994) with the highest and one (1998) with the lowest TC annual frequencies in the studied period. The results reveal that after the EIO SSTAs in the two extreme years are removed, the TC frequency in 1998 is close to the climatological mean, while the excessive TCs in 1994 are still simulated. The model results suggest that the warm EIO might be a major factor contributing to the unusually few TCs formed over the WNP in 1998, but the cold EIO seemed to contribute little to the excessive WNP TCs in 1994. © 2011 American Meteorological Society.
Subjects
Atmosphere-ocean interaction; Interannual variability; Numerical analysis/modeling; Teleconnections; Tropical cyclones; Tropical variabilty
Other Subjects
Atmosphere-ocean interactions; Interannual variability; Teleconnections; Tropical cyclone; Tropical variabilty; Atmospheric temperature; Atmospheric thermodynamics; Climate change; Experiments; Geographical distribution; Hurricanes; Storms; Tropics; air-sea interaction; annual variation; atmospheric modeling; geographical distribution; Kelvin wave; numerical method; numerical model; sea surface temperature; sensitivity analysis; tropical cyclone; Indian Ocean; Indian Ocean (East); Pacific Ocean; Pacific Ocean (Northwest)
Type
journal article