AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Editors' Highlight

Estimating the number of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic before satellite observations became available

Trends in hurricane occurrence over the North Atlantic are difficult to determine because hurricanes likely went undetected before satellite observations were available. To estimate the occurrence of these undetected hurricanes, Chang and Guo (2007) examined ship track records before and during the satellite era. They mapped satellite-derived cyclone tracks from 1976 to 2005 against ship tracks from the same time period to determine the probability that ships recorded wind speeds high enough to detect a tropical cyclone. Then they computed the probability that ships that sailed between 1900 and 1965 made wind observations at similar wind speeds, had tropical cyclones from the satellite era been present at the same rate during earlier years. From this, the authors found which storm tracks were too far away from ships to be detected. They determined that the number of tropical cyclones not making landfall over any continent or island likely was underestimated by one or fewer per year after World War I. Thus their results suggest that the characteristics of North Atlantic tropical cyclone track statistics might have changed during recent decades.

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