Tropical Cyclone Hazard to Mumbai in the Recent Historical Climate

The hazard to the city of Mumbai, India from a possible severe tropical cyclone under the recent historical climate is considered. The authors first determine, based on a review of primary sources, that the Bombay cyclone of 1882, documented in a number of print and internet sources and claimed to have caused 100,000 or more deaths, did not occur. Two different tropical cyclone hazard models, both of which generate large numbers of synthetic cyclones using environmental data - here taken from reanalyses in the satellite era - as input, are then used to quantify the hazard, in conjunction with historical observations. Both models indicate that a severe cyclone landfall at or near Mumbai is possible, though unlikely in any given year. As an example, return periods for wind speeds of 100 kt (the threshold for category 3 in the Saffir-Simpson scale) at Mumbai itself are estimated to be in the thousands of years, while return periods for a storm with maximum wind speed of 100 kt passing within 150 km of Mumbai are several hundred years. Results will also be presented from a storm surge model is driven by both sets of synthetic storms to estimate storm surge hazard.