Empirical indices of tropical cyclone genesis for CMIP5 models

Three empirically-derived indices of tropical cyclone genesis - Genesis Potential Index (labelled in files as "gpi"), Murakami-GPI ("GPIM") and Tippett Index ("TCGI") - have been applied to monthly outputs of a suite of CMIP5 models. The indices each use combinations of monthly mean meteorological and sea surface temperature fields in order to indicate regions with favourable conditions for the generation of tropical cyclones (known as cyclogenesis). The resulting outputs have been calculated over three time periods. Data are in the form of netCDF files containing time series of either seasonal or annual averages for each index. The files are arranged inside folders named after the CMIP5 model from which these products have been derived (note: these are not the official CMIP5 model names). Index outputs are stored over each of the following periods: - 1980 to 1999 (historical), - 2046 to 2065 (rcp85), and - 2081 to 2100 (rcp85) where the bracketed text indicates the CMIP5 Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) used to provide the climate forcings for the simulation. The seasonal time series files are labelled with the above year ranges, with a file name structure of: [index]_[year1]_[year2]_seasmean.nc The files containing annual average time series have file names of the form: [index]_ANN_mergetime_[model_label]_[year].nc The [year] label in the annual average file names corresponds to the first year of one of the respective periods above, respectively: - 1980, - 2046, and - 2081.

Lineage: Indices are from the application of in-house software to monthly mean fields from individual CMIP5 outputs

Credit: We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

This output was produced as part of PACCSAP Project 1.3.4: The impact of climate change on tropical cyclones and coincident events in the Western Pacific.