A Literature Review: Effect of Climate Change on Tropical Cyclones

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Meteorology, Aeronomy, Climatology, grade: 11.0, University of Exeter, language: English, abstract: Since tropical cyclones(TCs) are one of the major geophysical cause of loss of life and property, it is important to understand if there is any change in the frequency and intensity of TCs due to anthropogenic climate change.

IPCC considers 0.25-0.5 C increase in warming over tropical oceans over the past few decades due to increase in greenhouse gas concentration over past 50years.

During 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, a statement was released on the connection between the TCs and anthropogenic climate change. The statement was in response to the increase in number of recent high-impact TC events which includes, 10 land falling Tcs in Japan in 2004, 5 TCs affecting the Cook island in a five week period during 2005, cyclone Gafilo in Madagascar in 2004, cyclone Larry in Australia in 2006, typhoon Saomai in China in 2006, and violently active Atlantic TC season during the period of 2004 to 2005, including the catastrophic socioeconomic impact of Hurricane Katrina. A few recent articles [1] have noted a large increase in TC¿s intensity, frequency and wind-speeds in some regions during past 5 decades, which could be attributed to the increase in the concentration of green house gases in past 50years. However, other studies explain this noticed increase as a result of better observations made and instruments used, making it easier to detect TCs.

Consensus statement by the International workshop on TC-6 reported uncertain conclusions about the influence of climate change on TC after taking into account evidence both for and against.

It was concluded that no TC could be solely attributed to the anthropogenic climate change. Model and theory predicts 3-5% increase in wind speed per degree C increase in SST. But, there is inconsistency between the small change in wind speed projected by theory and modelling versus large variations reported by some observational studies. Significant limitation of measurements over some regions make detection of trends difficult. It was suggested that if increase in SST continues, susceptibility to TC storm surge flooding would strengthen.