Correlation between sea-level rise and aspects of future tropical
cyclone activity in CMIP6 models
Abstract
Future coastal flood hazard at many locations will be impacted by both
tropical cyclone (TC) change and relative sea-level rise (SLR). Despite
sea level and TC activity being influenced by common thermodynamic and
dynamic climate variables, their future changes are generally considered
independently. Here, we investigate correlations between SLR and TC
change derived from simulations of 26 Coupled Model Intercomparison
Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models. We first explore correlations between
SLR and TC activity by inference from two large‑scale factors known to
modulate TC activity: potential intensity (PI) and vertical wind shear.
Under the high emissions SSP5-8.5, SLR is strongly correlated with PI
change (positively) and vertical wind shear change (negatively) over
much of the western North Atlantic and North West Pacific. To explore
the impact of the joint changes on flood hazard, we then conduct
climatologyhydrodynamic modeling with New York City (NYC) as an example.
Coastal flood hazard at NYC correlates strongly with global mean surface
air temperature (GSAT), due to joint increases in both sea level and TC
storm surges, the later driven by stronger and more slowly moving TCs.
If positive correlations between SLR and TC changes are ignored in
estimating flood hazard, the average projected change to the historical
100 year storm tide event is under-estimated by 0.09 m (7%) and the
range across CMIP6 models is underestimated by 0.17 m (11 %). Our
results suggest that flood hazard assessments that neglect the joint
influence of these factors and that do not reflect the full distribution
of GSAT changes will not accurately represent future flood hazard.