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Modulation of western North Pacific tropical cyclone activity by the Atlantic Meridional Mode

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Abstract

This study examines the year-to-year modulation of the western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclones (TC) activity by the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM) using both observations and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Forecast-oriented Low Ocean Resolution Version of CM2.5 (FLOR) global coupled model. 1. The positive (negative) AMM phase suppresses (enhances) WNP TC activity in observations. The anomalous occurrence of WNP TCs results mainly from changes in TC genesis in the southeastern part of the WNP. 2. The observed responses of WNP TC activity to the AMM are connected to the anomalous zonal vertical wind shear (ZVWS) caused by AMM-induced changes to the Walker circulation. During the positive AMM phase, the warming in the North Atlantic induces strong descending flow in the tropical eastern and central Pacific, which intensifies the Walker cell in the WNP. The intensified Walker cell is responsible for the suppressed (enhanced) TC genesis in the eastern (western) part of the WNP by strengthening (weakening) ZVWS. 3. The observed WNPTC–AMM linkage is examined by the long-term control and idealized perturbations experiment with FLOR-FA. A suite of sensitivity experiments strongly corroborate the observed WNPTC–AMM linkage and underlying physical mechanisms.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Jim Kossin and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments that improve this paper. The authors thank Lakshmi Krishnamurthy and Honghai Zhang for their comments that improve an earlier version of this manuscript. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants AGS-1262091 and AGS-1262099.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Wei Zhang, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Hiroyuki Murakami, Anthony Rosati, Xiaosong Yang, Liwei Jia & Fanrong Zeng

  2. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Wei Zhang, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Hiroyuki Murakami & Liwei Jia

  3. IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Gabriele Villarini

  4. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    Xiaosong Yang

  5. Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education, and Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Wei Zhang

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  1. Wei Zhang
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  2. Gabriel A. Vecchi
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  3. Gabriele Villarini
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  7. Liwei Jia
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei Zhang.

Appendix

Appendix

TCs in FLOR are tracked from 6-hourly model output by using the tracker developed at GFDL and this tracker has been implemented in Murakami et al. (2015) and Zhang et al. (2016a, b). The temperature anomaly averaged vertically over 300 and 500 hPa (ta), 10 m wind speed, 850 hPa relative vorticity and sea level pressure (SLP) are key factors of this tracker. The tracking procedures are as follows.

  1. 1.

    Find local minima of the smoothed SLP field. The location of the cyclone center is properly adjusted by fitting a biquadratic surface to the SLP and locating the center at the minima.

  2. 2.

    Closed contours are in an interval of 2 hPa (dp) around every single low center. The Nth contour is marked as the contiguous region surrounding a low central pressure P with pressures lower than dp × N + P, as detected by a “flood fill” algorithm. Note that the contours are not required to be circular and a maximum radius of 3,000 km is searched from each candidate SLP low center.

  3. 3.

    If the above closed contours are found, the low is counted as a TC center. In this way, the tracker attempts to find all closed contours within a certain distance of the low center and without entering contours belonging to another low. The maximum 10-m wind inside the set of closed contours is taken as the maximum wind speed at that time for the storm.

  4. 4.

    Warm cores are detected via similar processes: closed 1 K contours are found surrounding the maximum ta within a TC’s identified contours, no more than 1 degree from the low center. This contour must have a radius smaller than 3 degrees in distance. If such a core is not found, it is not considered as a warm-core low center and the center is rejected.

  5. 5.

    TC centers are combined into a TC track by taking a low center at time T−dt, extrapolating its motion forward dt, and then seeking for storms within 750 km. A deeper low center has higher priority of tracking.

  6. 6.

    The following criteria are required to finalize the TC identifications.

    1. (a)

      At least 72 h of total detection lifetime (not necessarily consecutive).

    2. (b)

      At least 48 cumulative (not necessarily consecutive) hours with a warm core.

    3. (c)

      At least 36 consecutive hours of a warm core with winds greater than 17.5 ms−1.

    4. (d)

      TC genesis should be confined equatorward of 40°N.

TC track/genesis density in the WNP is binned into 5° × 5° grid boxes at a 6-h interval without smoothing.

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Zhang, W., Vecchi, G.A., Villarini, G. et al. Modulation of western North Pacific tropical cyclone activity by the Atlantic Meridional Mode. Clim Dyn 48, 631–647 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3099-2

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