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HITS: Hurricane Intensity and Track Simulator with North Atlantic Ocean Applications for Risk Assessment

A nonparametric stochastic model is developed and tested for the simulation of tropical cyclone tracks. Tropical cyclone tracks demonstrate continuity and memory over many time and space steps. Clusters of tracks can be coherent, and the separation between clusters may be marked by geographical locations where groups of tracks diverge as a result of the physics of the underlying process. Consequently, their evolution may be non-Markovian. Markovian simulation models, as are often used, may produce tracks that potentially diverge or lose memory quicker than happens in nature. This is addressed here through a model that simulates tracks by randomly sampling track segments of varying length, selected from historical tracks. For performance evaluation, a spatial grid is imposed on the domain of interest. For each grid box, long-term tropical cyclone risk is assessed through the annual probability distributions of the number of storm hours, landfalls, winds, and other statistics. Total storm length is determined at birth by local distribution, and movement to other tropical cyclone segments by distance to neighbor tracks, comparative vector, and age of track. The model is also applied to the conditional simulation of hurricane tracks from specific positions for hurricanes that were not included in the model fitting so as to see whether the probabilistic coverage intervals properly cover the subsequent track. Consequently, tests of both the long-term probability distributions of hurricane landfall and of event simulations from the model are provided

Classifying North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Tracks by Mass Moments

A new method for classifying tropical cyclones or similar features is introduced. The cyclone track is considered as an open spatial curve, with the wind speed or power information along the curve considered to be a mass attribute. The first and second moments of the resulting object are computed and then used to classify the historical tracks using standard clustering algorithms. Mass moments allow the whole track shape, length, and location to be incorporated into the clustering methodology. Tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin are clustered with K-means by mass moments, producing an optimum of six clusters with differing genesis locations, track shapes, intensities, life spans, landfalls, seasonal patterns, and trends. Even variables that are not directly clustered show distinct separation between clusters. A trend analysis confirms recent conclusions of increasing tropical cyclones in the basin over the past two decades. However, the trends vary across clusters

Dynamical Structure of Extreme Floods in the U.S. Midwest and the United Kingdom

Twenty extreme spring floods that occurred in the Ohio basin between 1901 and 2008, identified from daily river discharge data, are investigated and compared to the April 2011 Ohio River flood event. Composites of synoptic fields for the flood events show that all of these floods are associated with a similar pattern of sustained advection of low-level moisture and warm air from the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The typical flow conditions are governed by an anomalous semistationary ridge, situated east of the U.S. East Coast, that steers the moisture and converges it into the Ohio River valley. Significantly, the moisture path common to all of the 20 cases studied here as well as the case of April 2011 is distinctly different from the normal path of Atlantic moisture during spring, which occurs farther west. It is shown further that the Ohio basin moisture convergence responsible for the floods is caused primarily by the atmospheric circulation anomaly advecting the climatological mean moisture field. Transport and related convergence due to the covariance between moisture anomalies and circulation anomalies are of secondary but nonnegligible importance. The importance of atmospheric circulation anomalies to floods is confirmed by conducting a similar analysis for a series of winter floods on the river Eden in northwest England

Northern Hemisphere winter snow anomalies: ENSO, NAO and the winter of 2009/10

Winter 2009/10 had anomalously large snowfall in the central parts of the United States and in northwestern Europe. Connections between seasonal snow anomalies and the large scale atmospheric circulation are explored. An El Niño state is associated with positive snowfall anomalies in the southern and central United States and along the eastern seaboard and negative anomalies to the north. A negative NAO causes positive snow anomalies across eastern North America and in northern Europe. It is argued that increased snowfall in the southern U.S. is contributed to by a southward displaced storm track but further north, in the eastern U.S. and northern Europe, positive snow anomalies arise from the cold temperature anomalies of a negative NAO. These relations are used with observed values of NINO3 and the NAO to conclude that the negative NAO and El Niño event were responsible for the northern hemisphere snow anomalies of winter 2009/10

Dynamical Causes of the 2010/11 Texas–Northern Mexico Drought

The causes of the Texas–northern Mexico drought during 2010–11 are shown, using observations, reanalyses, and model simulations, to arise from a combination of ocean forcing and internal atmospheric variability. The drought began in fall 2010 and winter 2010/11 as a La Niña event developed in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Climate models forced by observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) produced dry conditions in fall 2010 through spring 2011 associated with transient eddy moisture flux divergence related to a northward shift of the Pacific–North American storm track, typical of La Niña events. In contrast the observed drought was not associated with such a clear shift of the transient eddy fields and instead was significantly influenced by internal atmospheric variability including the negative North Atlantic Oscillation of winter 2010/11, which created mean flow moisture divergence and drying over the southern Plains and southeast United States. The models suggest that drought continuation into summer 2011 was not strongly SST forced. Mean flow circulation and moisture divergence anomalies were responsible for the summer 2011 drought, arising from either internal atmospheric variability or a response to dry summer soils not captured by the models. The summer of 2011 was one of the two driest and hottest summers over recent decades but it does not represent a clear outlier to the strong inverse relation between summer precipitation and temperature in the region. Seasonal forecasts at 3.5-month lead time did predict onset of the drought in fall and winter 2010/11 but not intensification into summer 2011, demonstrating the current, and likely inherent, inability to predict important aspects of North American droughts

Prediction of seasonal meteorological drought onset and termination over the southern Great Plains in the North American Multimodel Ensemble

The predictability on the seasonal time scale of meteorological drought onsets and terminations over the southern Great Plains is examined within the North American Multimodel Ensemble. The drought onsets and terminations were those identified based on soil moisture transitions in land data assimilation systems and shown to be driven by precipitation anomalies. Sea surface temperature (SST) forcing explains about a quarter of variance of seasonal mean precipitation in the region. However, at lead times of a season, forecast SSTs only explain about 10% of seasonal mean precipitation variance. For the three identified drought onsets, fall 2010 is confidently predicted and spring 2012 is predicted with some skill, and fall 2005 was not predicted at all. None of the drought terminations were predicted on the seasonal time scale. Predictability of drought onset arises from La Niña–like conditions, but there is no indication that El Niño conditions lead to drought terminations in the southern Great Plains. Spring 2012 and fall 2000 are further examined. The limited predictability of onset in spring 2012 arises from cool tropical Pacific SSTs, but internal atmospheric variability played a very important role. Drought termination in fall 2000 was predicted at the 1-month time scale but not at the seasonal time scale, likely because of failure to predict warm SST anomalies directly east of subtropical Asia. The work suggests that improved SST prediction offers some potential for improved prediction of both drought onsets and terminations in the southern Great Plains, but that many onsets and terminations will not be predictable even a season in advance

Mechanisms of seasonal soil moisture drought onset and termination in the southern Great Plains

Mechanisms of drought onset and termination are examined across North America with a focus on the southern Plains using data from land surface models and regional and global reanalyses for 1979–2017. Continental-scale analysis of covarying patterns reveals a tight coupling between soil moisture change over time and intervening precipitation anomalies. The southern Great Plains are a geographic center of patterns of hydrologic change. Drying is induced by atmospheric wave trains that span the Pacific and North America and place northerly flow anomalies above the southern Plains. In the southern Plains winter is least likely, and fall most likely, for drought onset and spring is least likely, and fall or summer most likely, for drought termination. Southern Plains soil moisture itself, which integrates precipitation over time, has a clear relationship to tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies with cold conditions favoring dry soils. Soil moisture change, however, though clearly driven by precipitation, has a weaker relation to SSTs and a strong relation to internal atmospheric variability. Little evidence is found of connection of drought onset and termination to driving by temperature anomalies. An analysis of particular drought onsets and terminations on the seasonal time scale reveals commonalities in terms of circulation and moisture transport anomalies over the southern Plains but a variety of ways in which these are connected into the large-scale atmosphere and ocean state. Some onsets are likely to be quite predictable due to forcing by cold tropical Pacific SSTs (e.g., fall 2010). Other onsets and all terminations are likely not predictable in terms of ocean conditions

Western North Pacific tropical cyclone model tracks in present and future climates

Western North Pacific tropical cyclone (TC) model tracks are analyzed in two large multimodel ensembles, spanning a large variety of models and multiple future climate scenarios. Two methodologies are used to synthesize the properties of TC tracks in this large data set: cluster analysis and mass moment ellipses. First, the models' TC tracks are compared to observed TC tracks' characteristics, and a subset of the models is chosen for analysis, based on the tracks' similarity to observations and sample size. Potential changes in track types in a warming climate are identified by comparing the kernel smoothed probability distributions of various track variables in historical and future scenarios using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov significance test. Two track changes are identified. The first is a statistically significant increase in the north-south expansion, which can also be viewed as a poleward shift, as TC tracks are prevented from expanding equatorward due to the weak Coriolis force near the equator. The second change is an eastward shift in the storm tracks that occur near the central Pacific in one of the multimodel ensembles, indicating a possible increase in the occurrence of storms near Hawaii in a warming climate. The dependence of the results on which model and future scenario are considered emphasizes the necessity of including multiple models and scenarios when considering future changes in TC characteristics

Hydrogen Peroxide Triggers a Dual Signaling Axis To Selectively Suppress Activated Human T Lymphocyte Migration

H2O2 is an early danger cue required for innate immune cell recruitment to wounds. To date, little is known about whether H2O2 is required for the migration of human adaptive immune cells to sites of inflammation. However, oxidative stress is known to impair T cell activity, induce actin stiffness, and inhibit cell polarization. In this study, we show that low oxidative concentrations of H2O2 also impede chemokinesis and chemotaxis of previously activated human T cells to CXCL11, but not CXCL10 or CXCL12. We show that this deficiency in migration is due to a reduction in inflammatory chemokine receptor CXCR3 surface expression and cellular activation of lipid phosphatase SHIP-1. We demonstrate that H2O2 acts through an Src kinase to activate a negative regulator of PI3K signaling, SHIP-1 via phosphorylation, providing a molecular mechanism for H2O2-induced chemotaxis deficiency. We hypothesize that although H2O2 serves as an early recruitment trigger for innate immune cells, it appears to operate as an inhibitor of T lymphocyte immune adaptive responses that are not required until later in the repair process