Cluster Analysis of Downscaled and Explicitly Simulated North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Tracks ...

• Main Authors: Daloz, Anne S., Camargo, Suzana J., Kossin, James P., Emanuel, Kerry A., Horn, Michael, Jonas, Jeffrey A., Kim, Daehyun, LaRow, Timothy E., Lim, Young-Kwon, Patricola, Christina M., Roberts, Malcolm, Scoccimarro, Enrico, Shaevitz, Daniel A., Vidale, Pier Luigi, Wang, Hui, Wehner, Michael F., Zhao, Ming
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Columbia University 2015
• Subjects: Hurricanes; Hurricanes > Tracks; Hurricanes > Tracks > Mathematical models; Climatic changes; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/d8057f51; https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8057F51

A realistic representation of the North Atlantic tropical cyclone tracks is crucial as it allows, for example, explaining potential changes in U.S. landfalling systems. Here, the authors present a tentative study that examines the ability of recent climate models to represent North Atlantic tropical cyclone tracks. Tracks from two types of climate models are evaluated: explicit tracks are obtained from tropical cyclones simulated in regional or global climate models with moderate to high horizontal resolution (1°–0.25°), and downscaled tracks are obtained using a downscaling technique with large-scale environmental fields from a subset of these models. For both configurations, tracks are objectively separated into four groups using a cluster technique, leading to a zonal and a meridional separation of the tracks. The meridional separation largely captures the separation between deep tropical and subtropical, hybrid or baroclinic cyclones, while the zonal separation segregates Gulf of Mexico and Cape Verde ...