Seasonal forecasting of tropical cyclone landfall over Mozambique

Abstract

The 2000 tropical cyclone season over the South Indian Ocean (SIO) was exceptional in terms of tropical cyclone landfall over Mozambique. Observed data suggest that SIO tropical cyclones have a track significantly more zonal during a La Niña event and tend to be more frequent when local SSTs are warmer. The combination of both conditions happened during the 2000 SIO tropical cyclone season and may explain the exceptional number of tropical cyclone landfalls over Mozambique during that season. A set of experiments using an atmospheric model of fairly high resolution (TL 159, with a Gaussian grid spacing of 1.125°) forced by prescribed SSTs confirms the role of La Niña conditions and warmer local SSTs on the frequency of tropical cyclone landfalls over Mozambique. This also suggests that a numerical model can simulate the mechanisms responsible for the exceptional 2000 tropical cyclone season, and therefore could be used to explicitly predict the risk of landfall over Mozambique. A coupled model with a TL159 atmospheric component has been integrated for 3 months starting on 1 January of each year 1987-2001 to test this hypothesis. The hindcast produces significantly more tropical cyclone landfalls in 2000 than in any other year, and years with a predicted high risk of landfall generally coincide with years of observed tropical cyclone landfall.