“If it happened in…” a pseudo-global warming assessment of tropical cyclone tornadoes
type: CreativeWork
description: The overarching goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on the production of tornadoes by tropical cyclones (TCs) making landfall in the United States Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Ivan (2004), a prolific tropical cyclone tornado (TCT)-producing storm, is the particular case under consideration. This dissertation also seeks to document changes in risk due to these changes in the tornado production in future climates. The work under this dissertation is associated with three objectives. The first objective is to verify the ability of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate Hurricane Ivan, and its TCT production, under its current-climate forcings. The simulated TC track and intensity matched well with observations post landfall, and the simulated TC structure closely replicated the observed structure in terms of its shape and primary rainbands. TC tornado surrogates (TCTSs) were identified and calibrated using thresholds based on percentile values of maximum updraft helicity (UHmax) and simulated radar reflectivity. Although the magnitude of UHmax generally decreased as the simulated TC moved inland, sensitivity testing revealed that a threshold based on the 99.95% percentile value of UHmax achieved optimal TCTS coverage and agreement with observed TCT tracks on WRF domains with 3-km and 1-km grid spacings. Three cells were identified at three different stages of the TC inland evolution and were found to have hook appendages resembling supercells found in non-tropical environments. The cells produced storm tops of 13 km, with rotating cores with depths of 4 to 6 km. Doppler-radar-derived rotation tracks, which have been found to be useful to identify and track mesocyclones in Great Plains supercells, were evaluated for possible applicability to TC spawned tornadoes. The second objective is to determine changes in surrogate TCT generation in future environments under climate change. This is done by compa…
abstract: The overarching goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on the production of tornadoes by tropical cyclones (TCs) making landfall in the United States Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Ivan (2004), a prolific tropical cyclone tornado (TCT)-producing storm, is the particular case under consideration. This dissertation also seeks to document changes in risk due to these changes in the tornado production in future climates. The work under this dissertation is associated with three objectives. The first objective is to verify the ability of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate Hurricane Ivan, and its TCT production, under its current-climate forcings. The simulated TC track and intensity matched well with observations post landfall, and the simulated TC structure closely replicated the observed structure in terms of its shape and primary rainbands. TC tornado surrogates (TCTSs) were identified and calibrated using thresholds based on percentile values of maximum updraft helicity (UHmax) and simulated radar reflectivity. Although the magnitude of UHmax generally decreased as the simulated TC moved inland, sensitivity testing revealed that a threshold based on the 99.95% percentile value of UHmax achieved optimal TCTS coverage and agreement with observed TCT tracks on WRF domains with 3-km and 1-km grid spacings. Three cells were identified at three different stages of the TC inland evolution and were found to have hook appendages resembling supercells found in non-tropical environments. The cells produced storm tops of 13 km, with rotating cores with depths of 4 to 6 km. Doppler-radar-derived rotation tracks, which have been found to be useful to identify and track mesocyclones in Great Plains supercells, were evaluated for possible applicability to TC spawned tornadoes. The second objective is to determine changes in surrogate TCT generation in future environments under climate change. This is done by compa…
author: Carroll-Smith, Dereka L.
language: en
keywords: Tropical cyclone tornadoes, TCT, societal impact of hurricanes, pseudo-global warming, PGW, PGW and hurricanes, high resolution modeling of tropical cyclone tornaodoes
date published: 2018-09-27T16:17:22Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:40Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101477