Overview of the characteristics of tropical cyclones in the US CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group Models

The U.S. CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group has developed a set of simulations of high-resolution climate models using the same forcing with the intent of better understanding the properties of model tropical cyclones (TCs). All the models that participated in this project used the same forcing in the simulations. In the coordinated experiments of the Hurricane Working Group the climate models (global and regional) are forced with: (i) climatological sea surface temperature (SST), (ii) climatological SST with 2K added globally, (iii) climatological SST and doubled CO2, (iv) climatological SST with 2K added globally and doubled CO2, (v) observed monthly varying SST. The model tropical cyclones were then detected and tracked in the model output of each experiment by each group. In addition, downscaled tropical cyclone tracks were obtained for a few models using the methodology by Emanuel.

Here we summarize various characteristics of the model TCs. We describe the basic model TC diagnostics in these simulations, such as: number of TCs, TC genesis location, TC intensity and TC tracks. We then consider the changes in these characteristics in the warming scenarios, with more detailed analysis in one of the models. We also discuss the properties of the TC tracks in the Atlantic and western North Pacific from both the explicit model TC tracks, as well as the downscaled TC tracks.