Impact of stratospheric temperature on hurricane intensity: An idealized modeling study

Recent climate record indicates that low latitude lower stratospheric temperature has been decreasing around 1 degree every 10 years over past several decades. Several authors suggest that this stratospheric temperature trend may significantly modulate hurricane intensity and frequency on the inter-annual time scale. In this study, we explore the relationship between stratospheric temperature and hurricane intensity in a simple framework by simulating hurricane intensification over a radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE), which is achieved under constant sea surface temperature (SST) and constant stratospheric temperature. Hurricanes in this controlled RCE environment are simulated using a high resolution mesoscale model. We found that simulated hurricanes maintain their peak intensity for about two days, but weaken afterwards, primarily due to their interaction with large scale environment. Hurricane intensity, measured using surface pressure and the maximum azimuthal mean wind speed, are sensitive to our two control parameters: SST and stratospheric temperature, as expected. Simulated hurricane intensity will also be further compared against the canonical potential intensity theory and a modified potential intensity calculation. lication of this modeling study will be discussed.