‘Dynamically simulated tropic storms in a changing climate and their impact on the

assessment of future climate risk’ - PhD project

Ray BellSupervisors – Prof. Pier Luigi Vidale, Dr. Jane

Strachan and Dr. Kevin Hodges

• MOcean (Hons) – NOCS.Dissertation – Wind and wavevariability in re-analysis andsatellite measurements

• Met office placement 2010Waves team – wave ensemble system

About me

• Impacts on the climate system, removing heat and moisture from the ocean affecting large scale circulation

• Socio-economic impacts• Associated risk with climate change

Katrina 2005.Current damage $91.5bn(ICAT, 2011)

Motivation

• Does dynamically simulated TC activity (location, frequency, intensity, structure and energetics) change in model simulations including anthropogenic forcing?

• Will the predictability of TC variability based on natural climate variability of large scale atmospheric modes break down under anthropogenic climate change?

PhD outline

• HiGEM (N144, 1/3o ocean) - Higher resolution can resolve TCs better, important for intensity (Bengtsson et al, 2007)

• TRACK (Hodges) to indentify and track TCs

• Compare TCs in the transient run to the control run

PhD project

• Natural variability vs. Climate change (Webster et al, 2005; Pielke et al, 2005)

• Consensus on decreasing frequency globally (McDonald et al, 2005; Yamada et al, 2010) however contrasting regional changes

• Possible stronger winds (Bengtsson et al, 2007)

Increasing GCM resolution...• Increase in rainfall (Knutson et al, 2010)

Previous studies

• MSc modules (>50% of my time)• Reading lists – Structure and dynamics, natural

variability, climate change

• Tracking HiGAM data (developing TRACK, Linux and IDL skills)

Work done so far

HiGAM 1979 Min mslp

Typhoon track

• Reading – Natural variability, climate change• 1st chapter finished by October

• TRACK stats

• Tracking the HiGEM transient runs – compare to control runs and re-analysis/obs (Jane)

• CMIP5 data?• Air-sea interaction?

Future work

Collaborations

Username: metofficePassword: metoffice_tc

www.met.reading.ac.uk/~df019697

ReferencesBengtsson, L., Hodges, K. I., and Esch, M. (2007). Tropical cyclones in a T159 resolution

global climate model: comparison with observations and re-analysis. Tellus A, 59, 396–416.

Knutson, T. R., McBridge, J. L., Chan, J., Emanuel, K., Holland, G., Landsea, C., Held, I., Kossin, J. P., Srivastava, A. K., and Sugi, M. (2010). Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nat. Geosci., 3, 157–163.

McDonald, R., Bleaken, D., Creswell, D., Pop e, V., and Senior, C. (2005). Tropical storms: representation and diagnosis in climate models and the impacts of climate change. J. Climate, 18, 1275–1262.

Pielke, R. A. J., Landsea, C., Mayfield, M., Laver, J., and Pasch, R. (2005). Hurricanes and global warming. Bul l. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 86, 1571–1575.

Webster, P., Holland, G., Curry, J., and Chang, H.-R. (2005). Changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity in a warming environment. Science, 309, 1844–1846.

Questions ???