Kevin Goebbert
School of Meteorology
The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK
07 May 2009, 12:00 PM
National Weather Center, Room 3902
120 David L. Boren Blvd.
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK
Directions to the NWC (.pdf, 60 kb)
Global teleconnections, involving geopotential height, air temperature, /u/- and /v/-components of the horizontal wind, and sea surface temperature, are found to describe the annual variability of two tropical cyclone (TC) metrics in the Northwest-Australian (NWAUS) basin of the Southeast Indian Ocean (105–135°E). This study focuses on the total number of TCs and TC days that occur during a given season. To identify significant correlates, the global atmospheric and oceanic parameters mentioned above were correlated with the number of TCs and TC days from the Woodside Energy Ltd. TC data set. Large correlations were obtained between the NWAUS TC metrics and some of the global atmospheric parameters. The set of seasonal predictors includes, intra-basin, inter-basin, and cross-hemispheric regions. Unlike previous Australian TC activity studies, which stress the primacy of ENSO, here it is noted that the traditional Niño 3.4 and Niño 4 regions were not highly correlated with the NWAUS TC activity. Additionally, no local predictors based on SST, geopotential height, or air temperature resulted from the correlation analysis. Finally, the prediction schemes are assessed for hindcast skill and tested on four independent seasons that were not included in the development of the prediction schemes.
Back to NWC Seminar Series and Colloquia