Quantifying the Contribution of Tropical Cyclones to the Earth's Outgoing Radiation

This study aims to quantify the portion of the Earth's outgoing radiation that is attributable to tropical cyclones (TCs). To accomplish this, we have developed a method that starts with an image processing algorithm which labels cloud pixels associated with a TC, based on the time series of brightness temperature images and best-track data. The labels attributable to the TC are then combined with radiation data to obtain the TC-related radiation throughout its lifetime. Preliminary results are shown for the North Atlantic Ocean in 2012 and 2013: In 2012, the average TC shortwave and longwave radiation contributed 0.039 PW (or 0.35%) and 0.099 PW (or 0.34%), respectively, to the total regional radiation; In 2013, the contribution due tot TCs decreased to 0.022 PW (or 0.19%) for SW, and 0.059 PW (or 0.20%) for LW radiation.