Integrated Tropical Cyclone Energy and Its Application

Severe tropical cyclone disasters become more frequent in the recent years, bringing the need of more comprehensive energy scales, rather than a wind scale. This study analyzes the strongest tropical cyclones from the Pacific and Atlantic basins from 2001 to 2018 and creates a scale from their integrated kinetic energy. This scale is used to better estimate the cyclone’s overall energy through satellite determined wind speed and create a new categorization for tropical cyclones. It is known that the destructive potential and the maximum wind speed of a tropical cyclone are not necessarily correlated. Other studies have explored the relationships between cyclone size and intensity and have proposed damage scales based on integrated kinetic energy. This study uses the tropical cyclone best tracks from Joint Typhoon Warning Centre, the United States Naval Research, and the University of Wisconsin to obtain the information necessary to build an area-integrated kinetic energy scale. The scale is then compared with the Saffir-Simpson Scale and other features of the cyclones (e.g. eye temperature and cloud temperature). Preliminary findings are that the integrated energy of a tropical cyclone is correlated with its maximum wind speed, but not eye temperature or cloud temperature.

Applications include calculating the correlation between energy and, respectively, fatalities and financial losses during individual landfalls. The correlation coefficient is then compared to that of the correlation between wind and fatalities and losses respectively. A total of 94 landfall cases from Canada, China, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States are analyzed. The cases are sorted into 15 scenarios by geographic regions. Findings are that 14 of those scenarios show that integrated energy scale is more correlated to the fatalities and losses than the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale is. Furthermore, in island countries such as Japan and the Philippines, the fatalities and losses are more correlated with the eyewall (core) energy, whereas in continental countries such as the United States and China, the fatalities and losses are more correlated with the cyclone’s total energy. Nevertheless, a holistic view of both the integrated energy and the maximum wind speed should be considered when estimating the overall destructive potential of a tropical cyclone.