Identification

Title

A Weibull approach for improving climate model projections of tropical cyclone wind-speed distributions

Abstract

Reliable estimates of future changes in extreme weather phenomena, such as tropical cyclone maximum wind speeds, are critical for climate change impact assessments and the development of appropriate adaptation strategies. However, global and regional climate model outputs are often too coarse for direct use in these applications, with variables such as wind speed having truncated probability distributions compared to those of observations. This poses two problems: How can model-simulated variables best be adjusted to make them more realistic? And how can such adjustments be used to make more reliable predictions of future changes in their distribution? This study investigates North Atlantic tropical cyclone maximum wind speeds from observations (1950-2010) and regional climate model simulations (1995-2005 and 2045-55 at 12- and 36-km spatial resolutions). The wind speed distributions in these datasets are well represented by the Weibull distribution, albeit with different scale and shape parameters. A power-law transfer function is used to recalibrate the Weibull variables and obtain future projections of wind speeds. Two different strategies, bias correction and change factor, are tested by using 36-km model data to predict future 12-km model data (pseudo-observations). The strategies are also applied to the observations to obtain likely predictions of the future distributions of wind speeds. The strategies yield similar predictions of likely changes in the fraction of events within Saffir-Simpson categories—for example, an increase from 21% (1995–2005) to 27%–37% (2045–55) for category 3 or above events and an increase from 1.6% (1995-2005) to 2.8%-9.8% (2045-55) for category 5 events.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76h4jc7

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

2014-08-15T00:00:00Z

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

Copyright 2014 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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