Predicting periods of relatively higher flood risk would allow officials to prepare and deploy resources more in advance.

Their framework has useful applications for analyzing tropical cyclone forecasts and could help improve understanding of where and how often tropical cyclones may occur in the future under a changing climate.

Participants identified rising ocean temperatures; ocean acidification and carbonate dynamics; runoff and land/sea interactions; the impacts of climate variability and change on deep water ecosystems; extreme events; and the ability to predict and project these changes at temporal and spatial scales meaningful to sanctuaries as the most pressing needs.

Tropical cyclone formation and intensity is influenced by the amount of heat stored in the upper ocean, which depends on factors such as wind speed and stratification, or how much the warm upper layer of the ocean mixes with the cooler layer underneath.

The study, published in Nature, tracked the consecutive days that the atmosphere resides in a particular pattern associated with extreme temperatures and precipitation and found that these patterns are occurring more often as the Arctic warms faster than the mid-latitudes.