当前位置： 首页»科研成果» 2013 Projected Atlantic hurricane surge threat from rising temperatures Aslak Grinsted, John Moore, Svetlana Jevrejeva

 

Aslak Grinsted ^{a, b}, John C. Moore ^{a, c, d *}, and Svetlana Jevrejeva ^{a, e}

 

^a State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;

^b Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark;

^c Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, FI-96101 Rovaniemi, Finland;

^d Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, SE-75236 Uppsala, Sweden;

^e National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool L3 5DA, United Kingdom.

 

ABSTRACT

Detection and attribution of past changes in cyclone activity are hampered by biased cyclone records due to changes in observational capabilities. Here, we relate a homogeneous record of Atlantic tropical cyclone activity based on storm surge statistics from tide gauges to changes in global temperature patterns. We examine 10 competing hypotheses using nonstationary generalized extreme value analysis with different predictors (North Atlantic Oscillation, Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Sahel rainfall, Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, radiative forcing, Main Development Region temperatures and its anomaly, global temperatures, and gridded temperatures). We find that gridded temperatures, Main Development Region, and global average temperature explain the observations best. The most extreme events are especially sensitive to temperature changes, and we estimate a doubling of Katrina magnitude events associated with the warming over the 20th century. The increased risk depends on the spatial distribution of the temperature rise with highest sensitivity from tropical Atlantic, Central America, and the Indian Ocean. Statistically downscaling 21st century warming patterns from six climate models results in a twofold to sevenfold increase in the frequency of Katrina magnitude events for a 1 °C rise in global temperature (using BNU-ESM, BCC-CSM-1.1, CanESM2, HadGEM2-ES, INM-CM4, and NorESM1-M).

 

KEY WORDS: climate change, hazard, flood

 

PUBLISHED IN: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 2013, 110 (14): 5369-5373.

 

PDF DOWNLOAD: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/14/5369.full.pdf