2004/03/31 by Kerry Emanuel, Christopher DesAutels, Christopher Holloway +2 · 644 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Mathematics · #Atmospheric sciences #Climate variability and models #Climatology #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Environmental science #Geography #Geology #Initialization #Intensity (physics) #Mathematics #Meteorology #Ocean Waves and Remote Sensing #Physics #Predictability #Storm #Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research #Tropical cyclone #Wind shear #Wind speed
paper · doi:10.1175/1520-0469(2004)061<0843:ecotci>2.0.co;2
published in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 61(7), 843-858 (American Meteorological Society)
openalex publication_date 2004/03/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
The influence of various environmental factors on tropical cyclone intensity is explored using a simple coupled ocean–atmosphere model. It is first demonstrated that this model is capable of accurately replicating the intensity evolution of storms that move over oceans whose upper thermal structure is not far from monthly mean climatology and that are relatively unaffected by environmental wind shear. A parameterization of the effects of environmental wind shear is then developed and shown to work reasonably well in several cases for which the magnitude of the shear is relatively well known. When used for real-time forecasting guidance, the model is shown to perform better than other existing numerical models while being competitive with statistical methods. In the context of a limited number of case studies, the model is used to explore the sensitivity of storm intensity to its initialization and to a number of environmental factors, including potential intensity, storm track, wind shear, upper-ocean thermal structure, bathymetry, and land surface characteristics. All of these factors are shown to influence storm intensity, with their relative contributions varying greatly in space and time. It is argued that, in most cases, the greatest source of uncertainty in forecasts of storm intensity is uncertainty in forecast values of the environmental wind shear, the presence of which also reduces the inherent predictability of storm intensity.