Associations Between West Pacific Tropical Cyclones and Hurricane Sandy (2012)

Past research has linked the formation of tropical cyclones over the northwest tropical Pacific Ocean to large-scale, organized tropical convection and circulation anomalies. Many of these tropical cyclones later interact with the Northern Hemisphere extratropical circulation and help to excite Rossby wave trains that sometimes extend as far east as Europe. As these wave trains amplify, they are often observed to break or propagate equatorward downstream of their source regions, which in turn can influence the organization and evolution of tropical convection and circulation anomalies in a different basin. Thus, recurving tropical cyclones in the northwest Pacific can contribute to the evolution of tropical convection and circulation anomalies, including other tropical cyclones, at a later time in different parts of the world.

A preliminary analysis suggests linkages between organized tropical convection over the Maritime Continent and West Pacific, a series of northwest Pacific tropical cyclones, and the evolution of the Northern Hemisphere extratropical circulation prior to the development of Hurricane Sandy (2012). Specifically, associations between organized tropical convection, the development of Rossby wave trains over the North Pacific and North America, and the track of Sandy are examined.