The impact of zonally symmetric and asymmetric climates on tropical cyclone genesis in coupled Aqua and Ridge Planets

Tropical cyclone genesis and development largely depend on the conduciveness of the large-scale environment. We demonstrate the impact of zonal asymmetry on tropical cyclone genesis magnitude and distribution using two idealized coupled climate models. We first examine a zonally symmetric configuration, “Aqua”, which is a water-covered planet without land except for two polar caps. We then break the zonal symmetry by introducing a single grid-cell-wide strip of idealized continent between the two polar caps on “Ridge". The coupled CESM configurations in this study consist of active atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land components. This dataset includes the output from the atmospheric component (CAM4) and the oceanic component (MOM6) on Aqua and Ridge. The CAM4 data includes monthly surface temperature, precipitation, and surface pressure, and the 100-year climatology of all default output variables. The MOM6 data includes the 100-year climatology of the variables used in this paper. A comparison of Aqua and Ridge allows us to isolate the impact of zonal asymmetries on mean climate, tropical variability, and tropical cyclone genesis.