2010

Author(s): Gentry MS, Lackmann GM

Poster Presentation in Session 15A, Tropical Climatology and Climate Change I: This research addresses the question of how climate change could impact seasonal Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity by the end of the 21st century. Specifically, how might a particularly active season, such as that of 2005, change in the future? Numerical simulations of TCs provide an ideal tool with which to test the sensitivity of TC intensity to modifications in the surrounding environment. However long-term simulations using global climate models (GCMs) require coarse resolution. In this study, GCM-predicted temperature and moisture anomalies are incorporated into a higher-resolution simulation performed with the Weather, Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The goal of this study is to predict how an active Atlantic TC season, such as that of 2005, might be altered in a future climate affected by global warming.