A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

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A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#1 Postby AJC3 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:53 pm

...and their contribution to the reason behind the recent increase in TC numbers. It uses last season (2020) to make some salient points. Should make for a great discussion.

https://noaanhc.wordpress.com/2021/06/3 ... n-yes-but/
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#2 Postby EquusStorm » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:23 am

I forgot NHC even had a blog. Fascinating stuff.

I've said many times it's not a good idea to use named storm counts before about the 1980s when discussing activity changes and climo and that article pretty much drives it home excellently. Technology is in a great place now where we're able to spot essentially anything that meets criterion, a liberty we did not have for the vast majority of the historical record. That said, it's also important that we don't try to decry things that would not have been classified without this advance in technology.

In a much similar vein, since dual-pol radar technology came online about a decade ago, we are finding and confirming many more brief tornadoes that we would have probably never known about before this technology. This means outbreaks today have many more short lived EF0s and EF1s than outbreaks before 2011 or so. Does this mean modern outbreak numbers are in error and we should not count the tornadoes confirmed solely by new tech so today's outbreaks aren't much more prolific in the record books than historical ones? Of course not; to ignore and not warn for or document tornadoes that are confirmed solely by a TDS in a rural or forested area would be absurd; and as such, it is equally unscientific to ignore brief criterion-meeting tropical cyclones confirmed by new tech that would not have been noticed or designated in the past. This leads to many more weak tornadoes in modern outbreaks, but that's a much more accurate number than we had in the past to what actually occurs thanks to catching the brief ones no one reports.

This means we can never do an accurate 1-to-1 comparison of named storm (or tornado) counts with an era before the new tech, because the named storm counts prior to the 1980s or so are going to be significantly too low, making the more recent years seem more prolific. I've mulled over satellite data for many hours and found numerous brief high latitude mostly subtropical storms in the 80s, 90s, and even early 00s that almost certainly should have been classified, but we didn't always have the tech to be sure they were warm core enough or sufficiently closed back then.

Modern seasons show a much more accurate picture of how many storms per year we get in the basin. We don't drive Model Ts anymore or light the streets with gas lamps, so neither should we still be using named storm counts and standards from a similar era as a strict truth when much better technology exists. Just add a half dozen storms per year or so we likely could not see to those old years' named storm count and only use the last 40 years or so for accurate climo. We're never going to have an accurate picture of how many storms we had in eras before that so we probably shouldn't lean too heavily on the yearly totals as a hard fast rule. It's likely activity in the Atlantic has increased a little over time, but it's definitely not as sharp as it seems from the storm count increase. We just legitimately don't have any record of a bunch of them; reanalysis can only do so much with the sparse records we have in places.
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#3 Postby Hurricanehink » Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:43 pm

Of the 30 named storms in 2020, seven were Shorties and a few more were just longer than two days in duration. Of these seven Shorties, four are very unlikely to have been “named” before around 2000: Dolly, Edouard, Omar, and Alpha.


NHC admits it as such. It doesn't mean those four storms shouldn't have been named, as long as they met the definition scientists have attached to tropical/subtropical cyclones.
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#4 Postby EquusStorm » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:26 pm

Probably a good way to put it - definitely count and document the brief storms as full tropical cyclones, but skip them when comparing total seasonal numbers with old seasons. I totally agree that the brief stuff wouldn't have been named back then, not that it shouldn't. Our lack of knowledge and technology limits our understanding of previous seasons so the storm count of those seasons should be seen through that lens.

One very good scientific reason to at least name and document them is, while the exact suitability of something to be named is perhaps somewhat subjective, tropical cyclogenesis is actually a very specific phenomenon, and even if something manages to make the full transition to the positive feedback loop that is a tropical cyclone for only a matter of hours, it's very important to document that for climatology reasons and to know exactly how often that genesis occurs. It's truly exciting to live in a time where we are actually able to catch anything that goes through that process, however brief, almost anywhere!
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#5 Postby AlphaToOmega » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:31 pm

I think a better way of comparing the activity of seasons when analyzing seasons before ~2000 is to look at major hurricane count. I doubt major hurricanes would have been missed years prior.
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#6 Postby toad strangler » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:40 pm

THis was a very good read as advertised. Usually progress is viewed as a positive thing all around regardless of profession, sport, medicine, whatever. But when it comes to tropical cyclone analysis there is a significant pc of the pie that wants to stick to old school tech and analysis in regards to naming tropical cyclones. It doesn't make any sense to me. The tools available "today" allow us to see actual text book genesis regardless of duration, presentation , or location. That's a good thing.
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#7 Postby tolakram » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:48 pm

I really don't understand the counting, as I've complained about over the years. I'll also add a minor correction to a post above, the NHC mission statement is about the best watches and warnings to protect life and property. There's no mention of scientific accuracy. We made up the definition of tropical cyclone, it's subjective. Sandy was not tropical when it came ashore in NJ. The NHC had dropped it, do we remember? That didn't go over well. In my opinion that's why these edge systems get named now. It's not about 'scientific accuracy', it's about public safety.
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Re: A Must Read: Excellent NHC blog post about short lived TCs...

#8 Postby EquusStorm » Thu Jul 01, 2021 4:15 pm

A perfect way to compare historic activity may be some sort of combined metric of ACE and total number of major hurricanes, the latter to account for the short lived home grown ones that ramp up fast and get strong but don't put out much ACE. That has remained fairly consistent over the years despite the increase of named storms, pretty clearly showing the named storm count would probably be quite similar if we had today's tech back then.
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Recognition of "Shorties"

#9 Postby Ubuntwo » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:39 am

After the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season, forecasters Landsea and Blake put together a presentation "Was 2020 a Record-Breaking Hurricane Season? Yes, But. . ."

They qualify the record-breaking nature of 2020 with its high volume 'Shorties'. These are defined as weak storms lasting two days or less. Over the past century, there has been a dramatic uptick in the designation of said shorties:



This uptick is the result of improving technology leading to better observation and heightened understanding of tropical cyclone processes.
These and other weak, short-lived systems since 2000 have been observed and recognized as tropical storms due to new tools available to forecasters including scatterometers, Advanced Microwave Sounding Units, the Advanced Dvorak Technique, and the Cyclone Phase Space diagrams.


2020 had 7 shorties in total. So far, 2021 has had 9. With the designation of STS Teresa, we saw the first official use of this terminology.
It is worth noting that Teresa will likely be the 9th so-called
"shortie" of the 2021 hurricane season -- systems that are short-
lived and relatively weak.


The science will only continue to improve. The NASA TROPICS mission (set to go up in 2022) will launch a constellation of 6 cubesats each with rapid refresh microwave radiometers. This provides enough coverage to scan systems approx. every 30 minutes. And that is just a model for future missions.

So it seems likely more and more "Shorties" will be recognized in the near future. Maybe one day, naming lists will be exhausted semi-frequently. Thoughts?
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Re: Recognition of "Shorties"

#10 Postby Hurricanehink » Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:37 pm

If a storm meets the criteria, no matter how short-lived, it should be recognized. For those who say “it needs to last more than 24 hours as a TS”, I point to significant tropical storms such as Allison 2001 and Imelda in 2019.
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Re: Recognition of "Shorties"

#11 Postby Ubuntwo » Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:56 pm

Hurricanehink wrote:If a storm meets the criteria, no matter how short-lived, it should be recognized. For those who say “it needs to last more than 24 hours as a TS”, I point to significant tropical storms such as Allison 2001 and Imelda in 2019.

I agree, anything other than that would be a step backwards.
From a warning perspective for mariners and coastal residents, it is very beneficial that the National Hurricane Center is now naming (and recording) these Shorties.
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Re: Recognition of "Shorties"

#12 Postby zal0phus » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:29 pm

I think in relation to name exhaustion/name wasting with "shorties" the naming system ought to be reformed somewhat. I like the auxiliary list in principle, but I think it would just be better to continually loop through naming lists like in Australia- that way, particular letters don't always get "wasted" on shorties or, conversely, retired over and over until no good names are left.
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Re: Recognition of "Shorties"

#13 Postby tolakram » Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:08 pm

The elephant in the room, so to speak, is the usage of storm numbers to promote climate change. This bothers a lot of people and then taking a position on it tends to place one in a 'camp' for one side or the other. The sad state of public discourse these days. For me, I think naming more systems is the right thing to do, AND I disagree with people claiming climate change is leading to more storms. I think better detection is leading to more storms. Shorties are usually legitimate. :lol:
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Re: Recognition of "Shorties"

#14 Postby Hammy » Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:38 pm

I've compiled storms that are likely to have been tropical cyclones and have gone through 1979 through 1994 so far the total number of nameable storms through that period is 175, or 10.9 per year, contrasting from the average of 9.1 per year when you only count official storms, as there were 146 during that period. Not a large increase in average, but this being the quiet period and frequent El Nino years, that's still around 30 storms that likely should have been counted that weren't.
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Re: Recognition of "Shorties"

#15 Postby bob rulz » Sun Sep 26, 2021 12:22 am

Anything that qualifies absolutely should count as a storm and get a name.

I agree with the poster above that I would prefer that the naming system be on a loop. I think that would be a lot better than our current system. I get that it's a useful indicator for how many storms we've had, but then we wouldn't have to worry about auxilary lists, or the biggest storms clustering at certain letters.

Also, the debate about active seasons and # of storms is why I prefer ACE as a measurement of how busy a season is. It's still an imperfect system, and it obviously becomes less reliable as you go back in time, but that's obviously true for # of storms as well. The difference is that missing some shorties in previous seasons won't affect the ACE much, but it does affect the overall # of storms.
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