Physical Society Colloquium

Tropical cyclones and climate change

Timothy Merlis

Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences & McGill Space Institute
McGill University

Tropical cyclones are among the deadliest and costliest natural disasters. It is, therefore, a pressing question of physical science to understand how anthropogenic climate change will alter the number and intensity of tropical cyclones. I will review the consensus expectations for these changes, the techniques used to address these questions, and several of my recent results. First, I will show that dynamic factors play a central role in determining radiative forced changes in the global number of tropical cyclones. The time-mean large-scale atmospheric circulation can provoke changes in tropical cyclone number that exceed those of thermodynamic factors. Second, I will show that the number of tropical cyclones is sensitive to temperature in a range of turbulent moist-convective flows.