An Intraseasonal Genesis Potential Index for Tropical Cyclones during Northern Hemisphere Summer

Abstract

An intraseasonal genesis potential index (ISGPI) for Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer is proposed to quantify the anomalous tropical cyclone genesis (TCG) frequency induced by boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO). The most important factor controlling NH summer TCG is found as 500-hPa vertical motion (omega(500)) caused by the prominent northward shift of large-scale circulation anomalies during BSISO evolution. The omega(500) with two secondary factors (850-hPa relative vorticity weighted by the Coriolis parameter and vertical shear of zonal winds) played an effective role globally and for each individual basin in the northern oceans. The relative contributions of these factors to TCG have minor differences by basins except for the western North Atlantic (NAT), where low-level vorticity becomes the most significant contributor. In the eastern NAT, the BSISO has little control of TCG because weak convective BSISO and dominant 10-30-day circulation signal did not match the overall BSISO life cycle. The ISGPI is shown to reproduce realistic intraseasonal variability of TCG, but the performance is phase-dependent. The ISGPI shows the highest fidelity when BSISO convective anomalies have the largest amplitude in the western North Pacific and the lowest when they are located over the north Indian Ocean and eastern North Pacific. Along the NH major TCG zone, the TCG probability changes from a dry to a wet phase by a large factor ranging from 3 to 12 depending on the basins. The new ISGPI for NH summer can simulate more realistic impact of BSISO on TC genesis compared to canonical GPI derived by climatology.