The East Asian Subtropical Jet Stream and Atlantic tropical cyclones

• Main Authors: Gabriele Villarini, Wei Zhang
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Hydroshare 2020
• Subjects: East Asian Subtropical Jet Stream; North Atlantic; Tropical cyclones; Climate Processes; Hurricanes; Dorian; Pacific
• Online Access: https://search.dataone.org/view/sha256:132dfb90846ab682be428fa658bcee10d41e2b21ee157af8bb1a927d17714a23

Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause significant societal and economic impacts, as 2019’s Dorian serves to remind us of these storms’ destructiveness. Decades of effort to understand and predict Atlantic TC activity have improved seasonal forecast skill, but large uncertainties still remain, in part due to an incomplete understanding of the drivers of TC variability. Here we identify an association between the East Asian Subtropical Jet Stream (EASJ) during July-October and the frequency of Atlantic TCs (wind speed ≥ 34 knot) and hurricanes (wind speed ≥ 64 knot) during August-November based on observations for 1980-2018. This strong association is tied to the impacts of EASJ on a stationary Rossby wave train emanating from East Asia and the tropical Pacific to the North Atlantic, leading to changes in vertical wind shear in the Atlantic Main Development Region (80°W-20°W, 10°N-20°N).