Quantifying the Contribution of Tropical Cyclones to the Earth's Outgoing Radiation

• Published in: IGARSS 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium
• Main Authors: Nguyen, KT, Alenin, AS, Ritchie, EA, Scott Tyo, J, Tyo, Scott
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2019
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/unsworks_71939; https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/603dfadc-9b72-4dea-8f49-a6e5f2420ab0/download; https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS.2019.8898504

This study aims to quantify the portion of the Earth's outgoing radiation that is attributable to tropical cyclones (TCs). To accomplish this, we have developed a method that starts with an image processing algorithm which labels cloud pixels associated with a TC, based on the time series of brightness temperature images and best-track data. The labels attributable to the TC are then combined with radiation data to obtain the TC-related radiation throughout its lifetime. Preliminary results are shown for the North Atlantic Ocean in 2012 and 2013: In 2012, the average TC shortwave and longwave radiation contributed 0.039 PW (or 0.35%) and 0.099 PW (or 0.34%), respectively, to the total regional radiation; In 2013, the contribution due tot TCs decreased to 0.022 PW (or 0.19%) for SW, and 0.059 PW (or 0.20%) for LW radiation.