THE LATITUDE DEPENDENCE OF INTENSITY IN CYCLONES AND ANTICYCLONES

Abstract

An enquiry is made into the way in which the mean intensities of cyclones and anticyclones vary with latitude. For middle latitudes a linear relation is shown to hold between the mean central pressure of cyclones, and of anticyclones, and the sine of the latitude of their occurrence. This implies that the mean ?potential intensity? of anticyclones is independent of the latitude. If, further, it is assumed that the pressure profile is independent of latitude, it can be shown that the total mass-excess and energy of anticyclones is approximately independent of latitude.