Quantifying the statistical distribution of Tropical Cyclone Activity in the historical record of the Dominican Republic

Abstract

In this study, we re-examined the Official Hurricane Database from the National Hurricane Center (HURDAT-NHC), an agency associated with NOAA, for tropical cyclone activity from 1851 to 2012for the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Basin. We performed analyses at two different levels for the island (i.e., all of the storm tracks in the Caribbean Basin near to the study area that made landfall and all of the events that crossed the Dominican Republic from a radius of 300 km from the coastline). This study includes the statistical occurrence of these phenomena during the study period and the climatological analysis of all tropical cyclone tracks (112 total events) by decadal seasonal distribution, fifty-year seasonal distribution and monthly seasonal distribution to show the lowest and highest activities. We performed wavelet analysis on the continuous data over a long time series to determine the important frequencies. This analysis provided a general statistical conclusion resulting from the data collected. A landfall probability for the study area corresponding to the long time series of (it’s 162) years within a radius of ~100, ~185 and ~300 km, based on the historical climatology tropical cyclone tracks, reveals the likelihood of a strike for a major or a minor hurricane. We present a review of the tropical cyclone activities that passed the Dominican Republic, which also forms part of the author’s dissertation.