Tropical cyclones are occurring more frequently than before

EurekAlert: Are there more tropical cyclones now than in the past? – or is it just something we believe because we now hear more about them through media coverage and are better able detect them with satellites? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute clearly shows that there is an increasing tendency for cyclones when the climate is warmer, as it has been in recent years. The results are published in the scientific journal PNAS.

How can you examine the frequency of tropical cyclones throughout history when they have not been systematically registered? Today cyclones are monitored from satellites and you can follow their progress and direction very accurately. But it is only the last approx. 40 years that we have been able to do this. Previously, they used observations from ships and aircraft, but these were not systematic measurements. In order to get a long-term view of the frequency of cyclones, it is necessary to go further back in time and use a uniform reference. Climate scientist Aslak Grinsted of the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen therefore wanted to find some instruments that have stood and registered measurements continuously over a long period of time.

"Tropical cyclones typically form out in the Atlantic Ocean and move towards the U.S. East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. I found that there were monitoring stations along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States where they had recorded the daily tide levels all the way back to 1923. I have looked at every time there was a rapid change in sea level and I could see that there was a close correlation between sudden changes in sea level and historical accounts of tropical storms," explains Aslak Grinsted.

....Together with colleagues in China and England, he then looked at the global temperatures over the period to see whether there was a trend for a higher frequency of cyclones in a warmer climate. The global temperature has increased 0.7 degrees C since 1923, but there are variations. For example, there was a warm period in the 1940s but the temperature has really risen since 1980.

 ...."We have calculated that extreme hurricane surges like Katrina are twice as likely in warm years than in cold years. So when the global climate becomes 3 degrees warmer in the future, as predictions show, what happens then?," reflects Aslak Grinsted....

The study is based on data from monitoring stations along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, where the daily tide levels have been recorded all the way back to 1923. Rapid changes in sea level show that there has been a tropical storm. The map shows cloud cover and ocean temperatures when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Warm colors show ocean temperatures exceeding 28° C which can strengthen hurricanes. Credit: Background image: NASA/GSFC