Variability of tornado occurrence over the continental United States since 1950

Abstract

The United States experiences the most tornadoes of any country in the world. Given the catastrophic impact of tornadoes, concern has arisen regarding the variation in climatology of U.S. tornadoes under the changing climate. A recent study claimed that the temporal variability of tornado occurrence over the continental U.S. has increased since the 1970s. However, that study ignored the highly regionalized climatology of U.S. tornadoes. To address this issue, we examined the long-term trend of tornado temporal variability in each continental U.S. state. Based on the 64 year tornado records , we found that the trends in tornado temporal variability varied across the U.S., with only one third of the continental area or three out of 10 contiguous states (mostly from the Great Plains and Southeast, but where the frequency of occurrence of tornadoes is greater) displaying a significantly increasing trend. The other two-thirds area, where 60% of the U.S. tornadoes were reported (but the frequency of occurrence of tornadoes is less), however, showed a decreasing or a near-zero trend in tornado temporal variability. Furthermore, unlike the temporal variability alone, the combined spatial-temporal variability of U.S. tornado occurrence has remained nearly constant since 1950. Such detailed information on the climatological variability of U.S. tornadoes refines the claim of previous study and can be helpful for local mitigation efforts toward future tornado risks.

Annual and seasonal tornado trends in the contiguous United States and its regions

“…The regions are similar to those recently used by Guo et al . (), except the Great Plains is split into northern and southern sections in this study (Figure ). Annual analyses include tornado and tornado day frequencies, the mean number of tornadoes per tornado day per year, and the proportions of annual tornadoes occurring within each region.…”

“…Map of the regions into which tornadoes were parsed. Regions are based on those used in Guo et al (), except their Great Plains region is broken into northern and southern sections herein.…”

“…This, in part, led Guo et al . () to examine trends in tornado variability at the regional scale. They showed that variability has increased only in the Great Plains and Southeast regions.…”

Comparison of extreme temperature response to 0.5 °C additional warming between dry and humid regions over East–central Asia

“…However, most scholars focus on regional mean temperature change, sea level rise, Arctic sea ice melting, and many other slow change processes (Serreze and Stroeve, ; Schleussner et al , ; Chen et al , ; Oliva et al , ). In the meanwhile, rapid processes such as extreme high‐ or low‐temperature events, storms, typhoons, and some other meteorological disasters should not be neglected (Guo et al , ; Nangombe et al , ). Some scholars have made great contributions to analysing extreme climate change in certain specified global warming targets.…”

An Analysis of Anomalous Winter and Spring Tornado Frequency by Phase of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the Global Wind Oscillation, and the Madden-Julian Oscillation

“…Despite their relatively common occurrence, there is notable intra-and interannual variability in the number of US tornadoes [6][7][8][9][10]. Due to the danger and variability of tornado activity, there is a need to improve seasonal outlook capabilities.…”