Characteristics of landfalling tropical cyclones in the United States and Mexico: Climatology and interannual variability ...

• Main Authors: Larson, Joshua, Zhou, Yaping, Higgins, R. Wayne
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: AMS 2005
• Subjects: Arctic; Pacific
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/m2zxbe-15gx; https://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/25103

The climatology and interannual variability of landfalling tropical cyclones and their impacts on precipitation in the continental United States and Mexico are examined. The analysis is based on National Hurricane Center 6-hourly tropical cyclone track data for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins and gridded daily U.S. precipitation data for the period August–October 1950–98. Geographic maps of total tropical cyclone strike days, and the mean and maximum percentage of precipitation due to tropical cyclones, are examined by month. To make the procedures objective, it is assumed that precipitation is symmetric about the storm’s center. While this introduces some uncertainty in the analysis, sensitivity tests show that this assumption is reasonable for precipitation within 5° of the circulation center. The relationship between landfalling tropical cyclones and two leading patterns of interannual climate variability—El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Arctic Oscillation (AO)—are then examined. ...