Global tropical cyclone landfall frequency under climate change
Jewson, Stephen
Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change: Global Landfall Frequency Projections Derived from Knutson et al.
Projections of changes in tropical cyclone (TC) characteristics under climate change are of great interest to those affected by TCs. In a recent paper, Knutson et al. combined a large number of previous results to produce projections consisting of distributions of possible future TC frequencies, intensities, and rainfall rates. These distributions provide a great resource for users of TC information. However, to apply the distributions to impacts models may require the user to solve a number of technical challenges including modeling correlations, fitting distributions, interpolation, and converting the projections to properties at landfall. I consider the frequency and intensity changes, and implement solutions for each of these challenges using a combination of recently published research and a new methodology. This allows me to produce a dataset of TC projections that give frequency changes as a function of landfall region and intensity. Mean intensity changes can then be derived from frequency changes. The projections are presented in a format that allows them to be used in impacts models without further processing. The interpolation and landfall adjustments tend to increase the frequency changes. As a result, my projections give increasing mean frequencies of hurricane-strength landfalling TCs in four out of six global basins, with mean frequencies increasing by up to 16% for a 2°C increase in global mean surface temperature. My projections are highly uncertain, but include uncertainty estimates. They are designed to be a useful resource for anyone interested in possible future TC frequencies and intensities.</p>
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