UND Senior Project work for 2025-2026, author Kellie Thrower, advisors Jacob Carstens and Montana Etten-Bohm
This work is supported by NOAA Climate Program Office Grant NA24OARX431C0051, under the Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) program.
The basis for this project comes from Bourdin (2024) Tropical cyclones in global high-resolution simulations using the IPSL model, and builds off their findings https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024ClDy...62.4343B/abstract
Tropical cyclogenesis in the Atlantic basin is strongly modulated by African Easterly Waves (AEWs), yet climate models often struggle to represent these precursor disturbances and their transition into tropical cyclones (TCs). This study seeks to determine why the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL CM6A) atmosphere-only model performs with more skill than other similar models in this basin, as demonstrated in Bourdin (2024). Using IBTRACS-derived TC tracks and the TempestExtremes detection algorithm, 560 Atlantic storms from 1950–2014 are analyzed to evaluate AEW structure, seed disturbances, and TC genesis processes in the model. Only TCs in a specified region are studied, from 0 to 30°N latitude and -80 to -10°W longitude, since this is the genesis region where AEWs are influential. Variables used to identify genesis include vorticity, divergence, radial and tangential winds, equivalent potential temperature and vertical wind shear. These parameters are used to backtrack genesis and observe how the spin-up process is represented in the model. Preliminary results suggest that the IPSL model’s ability to represent AEWs, despite typical limitations of global climate models at coarse grid spacing, contributes substantially to its skill in simulating Atlantic TC formation. Ongoing work aims to quantify the relative roles of environmental conditions and seed disturbance properties in governing TC genesis within the IPSL framework