Identification

Title

Water and energy budgets of hurricanes: Case studies of Ivan and Katrina

Abstract

To explore the role of hurricanes in the climate system, a detailed analysis is made of the bulk atmospheric moisture budget of Ivan in September 2004 and Katrina in August 2005 from simulations with the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model at 4 km resolution without parameterized convection. Heavy precipitation exceeding 20 mm h⁻¹ in the storms greatly exceeds the surface flux of moisture through evaporation, and vertically integrated convergence of moisture in the lowest 1 km of the atmosphere from distances up to 1600 km is the dominant term in the moisture budget, highlighting the importance of the larger-scale environment. Simulations are also run for the Katrina case with sea surface temperatures (SSTs) increased by +1°C and decreased by -1°C as sensitivity studies. For hours 42 to 54 after the start of the simulation, maximum surface winds increased about 4.5 m s⁻¹ (9%), and sea level pressure fell 11.5 hPa per 1°C increase in tropical SSTs. Overall, the hurricane expands in size as SSTs increase, the environmental atmospheric moisture increases at close to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation value of about 6% K⁻¹ and the surface moisture flux also increases mainly from Clausius-Clapeyron effects and the changes in intensity of the storm. The environmental changes related to human influences on climate since 1970 have increased SSTs and water vapor, and the results suggest how this may have altered hurricanes and increased associated storm rainfalls, with the latter quantified to date to be of order 6 to 8%.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7dv1k2s

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2007-12-12T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact