Attribution of Annual Maximum Sea Levels to Tropical Cyclones

Abstract:

Tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause catastrophic storm surges with major social, economic, and ecological impacts in coastal areas. Understanding the contribution of TCs to extreme sea levels is therefore essential. In this work we examine the contribution of TCs to annual maximum sea levels at the global scale, including potential climate controls and temporal changes.

Complete global coverage (1842-2014) of historical 6-hour best track TC records are obtained from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) data set. Hourly tide gauge data are obtained from the Joint Archive for Sea Level Research Quality Data Set. There are 177 tide gauge stations with at least 25 complete years of data between 1970 and 2014 (a complete year is defined as having more than 90% of all the hourly measurements in a year). We associate an annual maximum sea level at a given station with a TC if the center of circulation of the storm passed within a certain distance from the station within a given time window. Spatial and temporal sensitivity analyses are performed with varying time windows (6h, 12h) and buffer zones (200km and 500km) around the tide gauge stations.

Results highlight large regional differences, with some locations experiencing almost ¾ of their annual maxima during the passage of a TC. The attribution of annual maximum sea level to TCs is particularly high along the coastal areas of the eastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico, China, Japan, Taiwan and Western Australia. Further analyses will examine the role played by El Niño – Southern Oscillation and the potential temporal changes in TC contributions to annual maximum sea levels.