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Statement on Tropical
Cyclones and Climate Change
• Purpose: “The Sixth Workshop was attended
by 125 delegates from 34 different countries
and regions. The Statement has been
requested by WMO leadership and many
heads of National Meteorological and
Hydrological Services so they can respond to
questions from the media, and also to assist
in advising their governments on future
activities and how to respond to climate
change effects”.
Sequence of events
• Henderson Sellers et al., Bams: 1998
• IWTC-5: Decision made to prepare background
material for updated statement
• 2005: Papers by Emanuel and by Webster et al.
Record hurricane season, Hurricane Katrina
• November 2005: TMRP Committee TC2, Climate
Change Impacts on Tropical Cyclones, was reformed to respond to these events
• February 2006: A Statement on Tropical Cyclones
and Climate Change presented to CAS-14.
Procedure to produce current
document
•
Starting point
– Working Group Reports for all of Topic 4 of this Workshop (Climate
variability and Seasonal Prediction of TC’s)
– Working Group Report 4.2: Knutson et al., Possible relationships between
climate change and cyclone activity
– The February 2006 Statement
– Henderson Sellers et al., Bams: 1998
•
•
John McB developed a document, based entirely on these sources.
Then a week of high volume emails with a smaller subgroup to refine
and modify (Emanuel, Landsea, Knutson, Chan, C-Y Lam)
Special Session on last Friday night
– Expose the Statement to Emanuel, Holland in presence of Gray, Klotzbach,
Landsea etc.
– Draw ideas and comments from the floor to make the statement
representative of the views of this entire workshop (not just the researchers
– Two new major points came out of the Friday meetingIWTC-5: Decision
made to prepare background material for updated statement
•
Extensive rewrite, discussion and email traffic over the past weekend.
Components of the Science
• A) Observed warming of oceans
• B) Is the observed ocean warming due to
anthropogenic increases of greenhouse gases
• C) Is there a detectable signal of increases in
tropical cyclone activity in the observational record
• D) If the climate warms, what will be the impact on
tropical cyclone behaviour
• We, the IWTC community, are the appropriate
community to make a statement on c) d).
• We are not the appropriate experts to discuss or
make a statement on a), b).
AGENDA
• Read Executive Summary
– Discussion
• Read other key paragraphs
– Discussion
• Read paragraphs on
– Reconnaissance: Discussion
– Uniformity: Discussion
• Recommendations within the document
– Discussion
• Recommendations about the document
– Discussion
Recommendations about the
document
• Small group with appropriate technical knowledge to
redraft paras on reconnaissance and on uniformity
• That this Workshop endorses the Statement as being an
outcome of the workshop
• Request that WMO sends statement to heads of all NHMS
• Request that either WMO or this Workshop release it
publicly through a press release
• That we (Project TC2) send it to BAMS and request they
publish it as an outcome of this meeting
• That WMO/AREP place the Statement prominently on the
WMO website
• J.mcbride bom.gov.au