A Hypothesis for the Redevelopment of Warm-Core Cyclones over Northern Australia

Abstract

Tropical cyclones moving inland over northern Australia are occasionally observed to reintensify, even in the absence of well-defined extratropical systems. Unlike cases of classical extratropical rejuvenation, such reintensifying storms retain their warm-core structure, often redeveloping such features as eyes. It is here hypothesized that the intensification or reintensification of these systems, christened agukabams, is made possible by large vertical heat fluxes from a deep layer of very hot, sandy soil that has been wetted by the first rains of the approaching systems, significantly increasing its thermal diffusivity. To test this hypothesis, simulations are performed with a simple tropical cyclone model coupled to a one-dimensional soil model. These simulations suggest that warm-core cyclones can indeed intensify when the underlying soil is sufficiently warm and wet and are maintained by heat transfer from the soil. The simulations also suggest that when the storms are sufficiently isolated from their oceanic source of moisture, the rainfall they produce is insufficient to keep the soil wet enough to transfer significant quantities of heat, and the storms then decay rapidly.