How important are post-tropical cyclones for European windstorm risk?

Sainsbury, E. M., Schiemann, R. K. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-9856, Hodges, K. I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0894-229X, Shaffrey, L. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2696-752X, Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350 and Bhatia, K. T. (2020) How important are post-tropical cyclones for European windstorm risk? Geophysical Research Letters, 47 (18). e2020GL089853. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1029/2020GL089853

Abstract/Summary

Post-tropical cyclones (PTCs) extend many hazards associated with tropical cyclones (TCs) to the mid-latitudes. Despite recent high-impact cases affecting Europe such as Ophelia, little research has been done to characterize the risk of PTCs. Here we compare the climatologies and intensity distributions of mid-latitude cyclones (MLCs) and PTCs in the North Atlantic and Europe by tracking cyclones in the ERA5 reanalysis. Considering hurricane-season cyclones impacting Northern Europe, PTCs show a significantly higher mean maximum intensity than MLCs, but make only a small contribution to total windstorm risk. Our results show that a disproportionately large fraction of high-intensity cyclones impacting Europe during hurricane season are PTCs. The fraction of PTCs impacting N Europe with storm-force (>25ms-1) winds is approximately ten times higher than for MLCs. Less than 1% of cyclones impacting Northern Europe are identified to be PTCs. This rises to 8.8% when considering cyclones which impact with storm-force winds.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/92869
Identification Number/DOI	10.1029/2020GL089853
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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