Modeling tropical cyclone intensity with quantile regression

Abstract Wind speeds from tropical cyclones (TCs) occurring near the USA are modeled with climate variables (covariates) using quantile regression. The influences of Atlantic sea‐surface temperature (SST), the Pacific El Niño, and the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) on near‐coastal TC intensity are...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Climatology
Main Authors: Jagger, Thomas H., Elsner, James B.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2008
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.1804
https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fjoc.1804
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/joc.1804
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Summary:Abstract Wind speeds from tropical cyclones (TCs) occurring near the USA are modeled with climate variables (covariates) using quantile regression. The influences of Atlantic sea‐surface temperature (SST), the Pacific El Niño, and the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) on near‐coastal TC intensity are in the direction anticipated from previous studies using Poisson regression on cyclone counts and are, in general, strongest for higher intensity quantiles. The influence of solar activity, a new covariate, peaks near the median intensity level, but the relationship switches sign for the highest quantiles. An advantage of the quantile regression approach over a traditional parametric extreme value model is that it allows easier interpretation of model coefficients (parameters) with respect to changes to the covariates since coefficients vary as a function of quantile. It is proven mathematically that parameters of the Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) for extreme events can be used to estimate regression coefficients for the extreme quantiles. The mathematical relationship is demonstrated empirically using the subset of TC intensities exceeding 96 kt (49 m/s). Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society