Typhoon Bopha: Impact of an extreme tropical cyclone on the atmospheric water and energy cycle
Abstract
in a context of global warming, theory and modeling predict that hurricane intensity should increase with increasing global mean temperatures. it is therefore important to better study the extreme cyclones, which could become the average case. typhoon Bopha formed on november 25 and dissipated on December 9, 2012. it was the strongest tropical cyclone to ever hit the southern philippine island of Mindanao, making landfall as a Category 5 super typhoon with winds of 280 km/h. Bopha caused substantial damage to Mindanao, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of homeless and more than 500 fatal casualties. During the life cycle of the typhoon, the Megha-tropiques satellite provided 2 to 5 sampling of the tropical atmosphere per day, thanks to its low inclination orbit (20°). at that time, the two microwave radiometers sapHir and MaDras were both performing measurements thus giving the opportunity to investigate (i) how the typhoon impacted the atmospheric humidity of its environment and (ii) the temporal evolution of its rain field. For this purpose, three different levels of upper tropospheric humidity retrieved from sapHir, rain rates and releases of total latent heat estimated from MaDras were monitored along the storm track. We will discuss the mean behavior of the typhoon that shows strong lagged oscillations of humidity and convection during its life cycle and deepens its spatial asymmetries and their relationship with the nearby environment. this analysis was completed with the use of the traking algorithm tOOCan that allows to study how each individual convective clusters contributed to the life cycle of the typhoon.