tropical cyclone projections

Refining Australian region tropical cyclone projections

Abstract

Decision-makers require high quality projections of future tropical cyclone (TC) behaviour, especially coastally impacting TCs.  However, the latest international TC projection studies provide contradictory results on changes in TC activity, with some showing increases and others decreases in TC numbers both globally and in the Australian region. As a consequence our confidence in projections has been set back.  It is now clearer than ever that the scientific community must investigate why there are these differences. In order to progress we require a greater understanding of the processes controlling TCs in both observations and models to improve confidence in projections.

This presentation will provide an overview of work being undertaken to improve our current understanding of TCs in the Australian region.  Results based on a detailed analysis of TC formation environments and track characteristics will be presented, with an emphasis on Australian landfalling TCs.  The results from this work will be used to produce a subset of CMIP5 models with realistic TC climatologies and processes, which will enable the production of better informed TC projections for the Australian region. It is hoped that this will lead to reduced uncertainty and greater confidence in TC projections, which would have the potential to greatly benefit environmental, social and economic risk assessment and adaptation planning.