The poleward migration of the location of tropical cyclone maximum intensity
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Title:
The poleward migration of the location of tropical cyclone maximum intensity
Series Title:
Nature Magazine Volume 509 Letters
Creator:
James P. Kossin
Kerry A. Emanuel
Gabriel A. Vecchi
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin -- NOAA National Climatic Data Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Publisher:
Macmillan Publishers Limited
Publication Date:
Language:
English

Notes

Abstract:
Temporally inconsistent and potentially unreliable global historical data hinder the detection of trends in tropical cyclone activity1–3.This limits our confidence in evaluating proposed linkages between observed trends in tropical cyclones and in the environment.Here we mitigate this difficulty by focusing on a metric that is comparatively insensitive to past data uncertainty, and identify a pronounced polewardmigration in the average latitude atwhich tropical cyclones have achievedtheir lifetime-maximumintensity over the past 30 years.The poleward trends are evident in the global historical data in both the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, with rates of 53 and 62 kilometresper decade, respectively, andare statistically significant.When considered together, the trends in each hemisphere depict a globalaverage migration of tropical cyclone activity away fromthe tropics at a rate of about one degree of latitude per decade, which lies within the range of estimates of the observed expansion of the tropics over the same period. The global migration remains evident and statistically significant under a formal data homogenization procedure, and is unlikely to be a data artefact. The migration away from the tropics is apparently linked to marked changes in the mean meridional structure of environmental vertical wind shear and potential intensity, and can plausibly be linked to tropical expansion, which is thought to have anthropogenic contributions.

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Florida International University
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