A Proxy Integrated Kinetic Energy for Tropical Cyclones in the North Atlantic

• Other Authors: Buchanan, Sean (authoraut)
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A383167/datastream/TN/view/Proxy%20Integrated%20Kinetic%20Energy%20for%20Tropical%20Cyclones%20in%20the%20North%20Atlantic.jpg

The Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) of a Tropical Cyclone (TC), a volume integration of the surface winds around the center of the TC is computed from a comprehensive sea surface wind (NASA’s Cross- Calibrated Multi-platform [CCMP]) analysis available over the global oceans to verify the fidelity of IKE from wind radii estimates of extended best track (EBT) data maintained by NOAA for the North Atlantic TCs. The years 2004-2011 were examined in this study. It is shown that CCMP surface wind analysis severely underestimates IKE for TCs that are characterized as short in lifespan and small in size. Similarly, large and long lived TCs although reasonably well captured in NASA’s CCMP sea surface wind analysis continue to exhibit erroneous areal coverage of the TCs’ wind fields that are stronger than gale-force (34-kt; 17 m/s). The phase of the seasonal cycle of North Atlantic TC IKE also verifies in the CCMP analysis. A proxy IKE (PIKE) based on winds at radius of outermost closed isobar (ROCI) shows greater promise in replicating TC-IKE within the CCMP dataset than the traditional IKE. In other words, PIKE is capable of providing representation of the unresolved traditional TC-IKE values within CCMP that are dependent on wind fields at gale-force and stronger. The diagnosis of PIKE of TCs from CCMP was found to have a linear correlation of 0.8 with corresponding IKE from EBT. This relatively strong correlation raises the possibility of extending past IKE application studies over the northern Atlantic basin to other TC basins using CCMP wind analysis.