92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Thursday, 26 January 2012: 4:15 PM
Evaluation of the Tropical Storm Track Over the Intra-Americas Sea in High-Resolution Dynamically Downscaled Reanalyses and Select IPCC Climate Models
Room 350/351 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Yolande Serra, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ; and E. C. Crosbie

This work explores both the mechanisms of synoptic wave and tropical storm genesis in the Intra-Americas Sea (IAS) region using high-resolution regional climate simulations, as well as potential changes to these mechanisms based on dynamically downscaled simulations of the most recent projected warming scenarios for the region. The Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF ARW) regional model is used to dynamically downscale ERA Interim reanalyses at 1.5°x1.5° horizontal resolution to 22.5 km horizontal resolution over the IAS/Southwest US (60°-125°W, 5°N-45°N) for June-September 2002-2010. The high-resolution low-level relative vorticity from these simulations is used to obtain tropical storm track statistics (density, genesis and lysis) across the model domain. These statistics are compared to the original forcing data. Mechanisms of tropical wave and storm genesis in the region are also compared between the coarser forcing data and the high-resolution model results. Storm track statistics will also be presented of dynamically downscaled HadGEM2-ES global model data, a Hadley Centre IPCC model for the 5th Assessment Report (AR5). The AR5 data are downscaled to 35 km using a continuous run from 1950-2099, providing both present day and future storm track statistics based on the RCP 4.5 warming scenario.

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