Observations of front-to-back thermodynamic asymmetries in hurricanes

This study utilizes over 10,000 individual near-surface meteorological and oceanographic observations from moored and drifting buoy as well as measurements from the coastal marine automated network (C-MAN). Select pairings of global positioning system (GPS) dropwindsonde and airborne expendable bathythermograph (AXBT) observations are also included. The tropical cyclone buoy database (TCBD) used in this research incorporates observations from over 50 hurricanes between 1975-2005 and includes more than 200 buoy time series and GPS high resolution drop sequences.

Data from the TCBD has been successfully utilized in previous composite analyses conducted by Cione et al (2000) and Cione and Uhlhorn (2003). Recent evaluation of individual TCBD time series has also uncovered evidence of asymmetric thermodynamic characteristics associated with Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. Detailed analyses of these air-sea observations including possible implications with regard to overall storm maintenance and intensity change will be presented.