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The impact of human-induced climate change on potential tornado intensity as revealed through multi-scale modeling
  • Matthew Woods,
  • Robert Trapp,
  • Holly M. Mallinson
Matthew Woods
UIUC
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Robert Trapp
UIUC

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Holly M. Mallinson
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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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.
08 Jan 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
17 Jan 2023Published in ESS Open Archive