North Atlantic Hurricanes Activity and its Dynamical Response over South America

Author(s)

Laís Tabosa Machado

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto Astronômico e Geofísico (IAG/SBD)
• Defense date: 2019-04-29

Examining board members

Tercio Ambrizzi; Dirceu Luís Herdies; Everaldo Barreiros de Souza

• Advisor: Tercio Ambrizzi

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to investigate whether hurricanes from the North Tropical Atlantic Ocean can influence the South Americans atmosphere, especially in terms of circulation and precipitation patterns. However, since hurricanes have a great range of trajectories, genesis and decay this research only focused the study of hurricanes that may impact the South American, particularly in the northern continental region. In this sense, two hypotheses were established about the trajectory and intensities of hurricanes. For the trajectory, the hypothesis is that the closer the hurricanes pass by South America the greater would be their degree of interaction with the South American atmosphere variability. Also, the higher the Hurricanes classification, for instance, category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, the influence could be increased. Following this criteria 6 hurricanes were selected between the years 1988-2017 and they were evaluated based on ERA Interim reanalysis and CHIRPS data, as well as numerical simulations using the dynamic GCM DREAM model. The results showed that these hurricanes really impacted the atmosphere of the South America. At lower levels of the troposphere, the passage of hurricanes caused trade winds deformation, interference in the Intertropical Convergence Zones (ITCZ) position, besides of the influence on the cloudiness, pressure, temperature and moist in the north of the continent. In addition, it was detected interactions between hurricanes and the South Atlantic Subtropical High (SASH), where the SASH sustained the wind flows towards the hurricanes, supporting their intensification. Regarding the results for the upper levels of the troposphere it was observed the development of an anticyclone in the Northwest of South America as a response to the hurricane presence. It was noticed that this anticyclone interacts with the hurricanes once it moves according to their movement. In addition to these two approaches, it was also used the Normal Mode Functions in order to reconstruct the horizontal wind field through the individual contribution of each atmospheric waves excited from a hurricane. One of the selected hurricanes was chosen and the results indicated the main waves related to the characteristics observed at lower levels of the troposphere are the Rossby and Gravity-Inertial (GI) waves. For the upper levels, the atmospheric waves related with the formation of the anticyclone in northwestern South Americas were the Rossby, GI and the Mixed Rossby-Gravity (MRG) modes, where the MRG waves clearly show the interaction between the two hemispheres. The Rossby waves excelled at all atmospheric levels due to their relationship to the geostrophic approach, while the GI waves only showed divergence processes, being useful to identify regions linked to precipitation. The precipitation patterns during the hurricanes passage generates positive anomalies in the north of the South America and negative anomalies in central Brazil. This result was interpreted as an increase of momentum and moist concentrations in the South Americas northern region due to the interaction with the hurricanes. As a case study the hurricane Irma was investigated. This hurricane was intense but its track was distant of the South America being evaluated in the order to test the hypotheses previously assumed. The results indicated that the hurricane Irma did not have any impact in the South Americans atmosphere, where not interations with SASH, temperature or moist were observed. In summary, it was observed that North Atlantic Ocean hurricanes can influence the South Americas atmosphere when their trajectories are close to the South American continent. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/09430-9 - Relationship among hurricanes from North Tropical Atlantic and the atmospheric circulation over South America
• Grantee: Laís Tabosa Machado
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master