Abstract
Abstract. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the scientific community to explore the impacts of a world in which anthropogenic global warming is stabilized at only 1.5 °C above preindustrial average temperatures. We present a projection of future tropical cyclone statistics for both 1.5 and 2.0 °C stabilized warming scenarios with direct numerical simulation using a high-resolution global climate model. As in similar projections at higher warming levels, we find that even at these low warming levels the most intense tropical cyclones become more frequent and more intense, while simultaneously the frequency of weaker tropical storms is decreased. We also conclude that in the 1.5 °C stabilization, the effect of aerosol forcing changes complicates the interpretation of greenhouse gas forcing changes.
Highlights
Changes in tropical cyclone intensity, frequency and distribution are expected as the climate warms due to anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere
The Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) experimental protocol was designed in response to this request to permit a comparison of the effects of stabilizing anthropogenic global warming at 1.5 ◦C over preindustrial levels to 2.0 ◦C (Mitchell et al, 2017)
We present results from a high-resolution atmosphere–land model forced by the HAPPI prescriptions of sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration
Summary
Changes in tropical cyclone intensity, frequency and distribution are expected as the climate warms due to anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere. That project compared the combined effect of a spatially uniform 2 ◦C increase applied to a climatological average of observed SST centered at 1990 and of a doubling of atmospheric CO2 to a control 1990 simulation, as well as the separate effects of each factor Their principal finding was that a lower-resolution (1◦) version of the CAM5 and methods based on the genesis potential index (Emanuel and Nolan, 2004) could not reproduce the sign of the change in the global number of tropical cyclones produced by the highresolution version. Simulated tropical cyclones are identified and tracked with the Toolkit for Extreme Climate Analysis (TECA2.) available for download and installation at https://github.com/LBL-EESA/TECA using the methods described in Knutson et al (2007) Another critical difference between the HAPPI and the US CLIVAR experimental protocols is the aerosol forcing. Results from the 1.5 ◦C stabilization simulations are the same
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
