Chapters authored
Barotropic Aspects of Hurricane Structural and Intensity Variability
Part of the book: Recent Hurricane Research
Satellite Climatology of Tropical Cyclone with Concentric Eyewalls
An objective method is developed to identify concentric eyewalls (CEs) for tropical cyclones (TCs) using passive microwave satellite imagery from 1997 to 2014 in the western North Pacific (WNP) and Atlantic (ATL) basin. There are 91 (33) TCs and 113 (50) cases with CE identified in the WNP (ATL). Three CE structural change types are classified as follows: a CE with the inner eyewall dissipated in an eyewall replacement cycle (ERC, 51 and 56% in the WNP and ATL), a CE with the outer eyewall dissipated first and the no eyewall replacement cycle (NRC, 27 and 29% in the WNP and ATL), and a CE structure that is maintained for an extended period (CEM, 23 and 15% in the WNP and ATL). The moat size and outer eyewall width in the WNP (ATL) basin are approximately 20–50% (15–25%) larger in the CEM cases than that in the ERC and NRC cases. Our analysis suggests that the ERC cases are more likely dominated by the internal dynamics, whereas the NRC cases are heavily influenced by the environment condition, and both the internal and environmental conditions are important in the CEM cases. A good correlation of the annual CE TC number and the Oceanic Niño index is found (0.77) in WNP basin, with most of the CE TCs occurring in the warm episodes. In contrast, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) may not influence on the CE formation in the ATL basin. After the CE formation, however, the unfavorable environment that is created by ENSO may reduce the TC intensity quickly during warm episode. The variabilities of structural changes in the WNP basin are larger than that in the ATL basin.
Part of the book: Tropical Cyclone Dynamics, Prediction, and Detection