The impact of human-induced climate change on potential tornado
intensity as revealed through multi-scale modeling
Abstract
A novel, multi-scale climate modeling approach is used to provide
evidence of potential increases in tornado intensity due to
anthropogenic climate change. Historical warm- and cool-season (WARM and
COOL) tornado events are virtually placed in a globally warmed future
via the “pseudo-global warming” method. As hypothesized based on
meteorological arguments, the tornadic-storm and associated vortex of
the COOL event experiences consistent and robust increases in intensity,
size, and duration in an ensemble of imposed climate-change experiments.
The tornadic-storm and associated vortex of the WARM event experiences
increases in intensity in some of the experiments, but the response is
neither consistent nor robust, and is overall weaker than in the COOL
event. An examination of environmental parameters provides further
support of the disproportionately stronger response in the cool-season
event. These results have implications on future tornadoes forming
outside of climatologically favored seasons.