Called the greatest storms on the planet, hurricanes of the North Atlantic Ocean often cause tremendous social and economic upheaval in the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. And with the increasing development of coastal areas, the impact of these storms will likely increase. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of North Atlantic hurricanes and what they mean to society. It is intended as an intermediary between hurricane climate research and the users of hurricane information. Topics include the climatology of tropical cyclones in general and those of the North Atlantic in particular; the major North Atlantic hurricanes, focusing on U.S. landfalling storms; the prediction models used in forecasting; and societal vulnerability to hurricanes, including ideas for modeling the relationship between climatological data and analysis in the social and economic sciences.

This book provides research that shows tropical cyclones are more powerful than in the past with the most dramatic increases occurring over the North Atlantic and with the strongest hurricanes. Although such increases are correlated with warming oceans and are consistent with the thermodynamic theory of hurricane intensity, there remains doubt about the interpretation, integrity, and meaning of these results. Arising from the 5th International Summit on Hurricanes and Climate Change, this book contains new research on topics related to hurricanes and climate change. Bringing together international leading academics and researchers on various sides of the debate, the book discusses new research and expresses opinions about what is happening and what might happen in the future with regard to regional and global hurricane (tropical cyclone) activity.

An extended forecast of the frequencies for the 2009 North Atlantic basin hurricane season is presented. Continued increased activity during the 2009 season with numbers of tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and major hurricanes exceeding long-term averages are indicated. Poisson statistics for the combined high-activity intervals (1950-1965 and 1995-2008) give the central 50% intervals to be 9-14, 5-8, and 2-4, respectively, for the number of tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and major hurricanes, with a 23.4% chance of exceeding 14 tropical cyclones, a 28% chance of exceeding 8 hurricanes, and a 31.9% chance of exceeding 4 major hurricanes. Based strictly on the statistics of the current high-activity interval (1995-2008), the central 50% intervals for the numbers of tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and major hurricanes are 12-18, 6-10, and 3-5, respectively, with only a 5% chance of exceeding 23, 13, or 7 storms, respectively. Also examined are the first differences in 10-yr moving averages and the effects of global warming and decadal-length oscillations on the frequencies of occurrence for North Atlantic basin tropical cyclones. In particular, temperature now appears to be the principal driver of increased activity and storm strength during the current high-activity interval, with near-record values possible during the 2009 season. Wilson, Robert M. Marshall Space Flight Center NASA/TP-2009-215741, M-1253 TROPICAL STORMS; CYCLONES; HURRICANES; FORECASTING; EL NINO; GLOBAL WARMING; STORMS; PERIODIC VARIATIONS; ATLANTIC OCEAN; OSCILLATIONS

This book surveys the past, present, and potential future variability of hurricanes and typhoons on a variety of timescales using newly developed approaches based on geological and archival records, in addition to more traditional approaches based on the analysis of the historical record of tropical cyclone tracks. A unique aspect of the book is that it provides an overview of the developing field of paleotempestology, which uses geological, biological, and documentary evidence to reconstruct prehistoric changes in hurricane landfall. The book also presents a particularly wide sampling of ongoing efforts to extend the best track data sets using historical material from many sources, including Chinese archives, British naval logbooks, Spanish colonial records, and early diaries from South Carolina. The book will be of particular interest to tropical meteorologists, geologists, and climatologists as well as to the catastrophe reinsurance industry, graduate students in meteorology, and public employees active in planning and emergency management.

Estimates are presented for the expected level of tropical cyclone activity for the 2011 North Atlantic Basin hurricane season. It is anticipated that the frequency of tropical cyclones for the North Atlantic Basin during the 2011 hurricane season will be near to above the post-1995 means. Based on the Poisson distribution of tropical cyclone frequencies for the current more active interval 1995-2010, one computes P(r) = 63.7% for the expected frequency of the number of tropical cyclones during the 2011 hurricane season to be 14 plus or minus 3; P(r) = 62.4% for the expected frequency of the number of hurricanes to be 8 plus or minus 2; P(r) = 79.3% for the expected frequency of the number of major hurricanes to be 3 plus or minus 2; and P(r) = 72.5% for the expected frequency of the number of strikes by a hurricane along the coastline of the United States to be 1 plus or minus 1. Because El Nino is not expected to recur during the 2011 hurricane season, clearly, the possibility exists that these seasonal frequencies could easily be exceeded. Also examined are the effects of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation phase and climatic change (global warming) on tropical cyclone seasonal frequencies, the variation of the seasonal centroid (latitude and longitude) location of tropical cyclone onsets, and the variation of the seasonal peak wind speed and lowest pressure for tropical cyclones. Wilson, Robert M. Marshall Space Flight Center RIVER BASINS; SEASONS; HURRICANES; CLIMATE CHANGE; TROPICAL STORMS; WEATHER FORECASTING; EL NINO; POISSON DENSITY FUNCTIONS; WIND VELOCITY; GLOBAL WARMING; FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION; PROBABILITY THEORY; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; STRUCTURAL BASINS