What Is a Tornado Outbreak?: Perspectives through Time

Ćwik, Paulina; McPherson, Renee A.; Brooks, Harold E.

doi:10.1175/bams-d-20-0076.1

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 130 publications

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“…Indeed, there is no universally accepted definition of a tornado outbreak 15 . The issue with the 30-tornado threshold is that it yields a small number of annual outbreak days (the 63-year mean is 1.3 days per year), thus making meaningful statistical analysis challenging.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The regionality and seasonality of tornado trends in the United States

Graber,

Trapp,

Wang

2024

npj Clim Atmos Sci

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Continued efforts to build human resilience to the impacts of tornadoes require updated knowledge of tornado occurrences as well as how their occurrence characteristics may be changing in time and varying by region. We have temporally and geospatially disaggregated annual tornado reports in the United States and revealed that significant, long-term decreases in tornado days from 1960 to 2022 have occurred over the months of June through August, primarily within the Southern Great Plains. In contrast, long-term increases in days of tornado outbreaks have occurred over this period, particularly within the Southeast U.S. and during warm- as well as cool-season months. There are indications that these dichotomous linear trends in tornado days and tornado outbreaks have relaxed over the most recent decade. Our study highlights the need to better understand the role of internal climate variability and anthropogenic forcing in modulating tornado activity.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The regionality and seasonality of tornado trends in the United States

Graber,

Trapp,

Wang

2024

npj Clim Atmos Sci

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“…Previous studies have provided several definitions for the tornado outbreak depending on the intended purpose of the research; Some of them specified a threshold and provided a measurable characteristic, and some did not [12]. In this study, by incorporating the counts of impacted US counties into the LTO definition, we offered additional insight in terms of affected municipalities which can be later helpful for policy making and insurance analysis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers have provided several definitions for the tornado outbreak depending on the requirement of their research. Some of them specified a threshold and provided a measurable characteristic, and some did not [12]. In a number of previous studies [13,14] the number of tornadoes in an outbreak are typically between 6 to ten, no matter they impacted one county or more.…”

Section: Large Tornado Outbreaksmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining the changes in the spatial manifestation and the rate of arrival of large tornado outbreaks

Nouri¹,

Devineni²

2022

Environ. Res. Commun.

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This study presents an assessment of the spatial and temporal characteristics of large tornado outbreak (LTOs) days, in which several counties were impacted by tornadoes rated F2(EF2) or greater on the Fujita (Enhanced Fujita) scale in one day. A statistical evaluation of changes in the LTO clusters for two periods, 1950-1980 and 1989-2019, has been performed. There is a geographical shift of the nucleus (central impact location) towards the southeast United States. This spatial shift is also accompanied by reduced spatial variance, suggesting LTOs have become less dispersed (or more localized) in the recent period. The overall inter-arrival rate of LTOs, and how it changed during successive 31-year climatological blocks between 1950-2019 was investigated using an exponential probability model. The arrival rate has changed from 124 days during 1950-1980 to 164 days during 1977-2007 and remained relatively constant during later periods, indicating that LTOs are becoming less frequent.

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“…Scientists have studied tornadic storm systems because of their impacts on life and property (Doswell and Burgess, 1993; Silva Dias, 2011; Groenemeijer and Kühne, 2014; Taszarek and Brooks, 2015; Bikos et al ., 2016; Xue et al ., 2016; Antonescu et al ., 2017; Allen et al ., 2021). Tornado outbreaks (TOs), in particular, threaten society because they often comprise multiple, violent, long‐track tornadoes and affect populated areas (Brooks, 2004; Ćwik et al ., 2021). In the United States, TOs mostly influence regions east of the Rocky Mountains, where atmospheric conditions conducive to the formation of multiple tornadoes are more often present.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatology of 500‐hPa geopotential height anomalies associated with May tornado outbreaks in the United States

Ćwik

McPherson

Richman

et al. 2022

Intl Journal of Climatology

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This study supports efforts directed toward research on large-scale atmospheric patterns and on the variability of tornado outbreaks. Specifically, we applied rotated principal component analysis to identify synoptic-scale patterns of 500-hPa geopotential height associated with tornado outbreaks in the United States. We created a database of historic tornado outbreaks using kernel density estimation on events composed of at least seven tornadoes of magnitude (E)F2 or higher (major tornado outbreaks) that occurred in May from 1950 to 2019 (91 events). Results of the analysis show that the first three principal components explained the majority, that is, 74% of the total variation. Based on the analysis of congruence coefficients, the Promax oblique transformation was chosen as the most representative rotation in portraying physically meaningful modes and resulted in three main atmospheric patterns. Two of these, to the best of our knowledge, have not been yet identified as the most representative of tornado outbreaks in any previous studies. Additionally, results suggest that although synoptic patterns associated with major May tornado outbreaks remain the same over time, partial variability in their geographic location exhibits some cyclical behaviour, especially on decadal and multidecadal scales. Identifying these patterns can serve as a first step in determining how they may change under anthropogenic climate change in the future. K E Y W O R D S 500-hPa geopotential height, climate change, climatology, large-scale atmospheric patterns, principal component analysis, tornado outbreaks, United States

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What Is a Tornado Outbreak?: Perspectives through Time

Abstract: CapsuleTornado outbreaks typically are catastrophic events, affecting lives and property. This article presents the evolution of classifications and approaches to defining tornado outbreaks.

Cited by 10 publications

References 130 publications

The regionality and seasonality of tornado trends in the United States

The regionality and seasonality of tornado trends in the United States

Examining the changes in the spatial manifestation and the rate of arrival of large tornado outbreaks

Climatology of 500‐hPa geopotential height anomalies associated with May tornado outbreaks in the United States

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