An Objective Climatology of Tropical Cyclone Diurnal Pulses in the Atlantic Basin

Abstract

Storm-centered IR brightness temperature imagery was used to create 6-h IR brightness temperature difference fields for all Atlantic basin tropical cyclones from 1982 to 2017. Pulses of colder cloud tops were defined objectively by determining critical thresholds for the magnitude of the IR differences, areal coverage of cold-cloud tops, and longevity. Long-lived cooling pulses (≥9 h) were present on 45% of days overall, occurring on 80% of major hurricane days, 64% of minor hurricane days, 46% of tropical storm days, and 24% of tropical depression days. These cooling pulses propagated outward between 8 and 14 m s?1. Short-lived cooling pulses (3?6 h) were found 26.4% of the time. Some days without cooling pulses had events of the opposite sign, which were labeled warming pulses. Long-lived warming pulses occurred 8.5% of the time and propagated outward at the same speed as their cooling pulse counterparts. Only 12.2% of days had no pulses that met the criteria, indicating that pulsing is nearly ubiquitous in tropical cyclones. The environment prior to outward propagation of cooling pulses differed from warming pulse and no pulse days by having more favorable conditions between 0000 and 0300 LT for enhanced inner-core convection: higher SST and ocean heat content, more moisture throughout the troposphere, and stronger low-level vorticity and upper-level divergence.