Nature Research Journals
You are receiving this press release because you have registered to do so at the Nature Publishing
Group press site. In registering to receive these press releases, you have agreed to the terms and
conditions
EMBARGO
LONDON
NEW YORK
Monday 31 August 2015 16:00 (BST)
Monday 31 August 2015 11:00 (EDT)
TOKYO
SYDNEY
Tuesday 01 September 2015 00:00 (JST)
Tuesday 01 September 2015 01:00 (AEST)
Wire services’ stories must always carry the embargo time at the head of each item, and may not be
sent out more than 24 hours before that time.
Solely for the purpose of soliciting informed comment on Nature Publishing Group papers, you may
show relevant parts of this document, and the papers to which it refers, to independent specialists – but
you must ensure in advance that they understand and accept Nature Publishing Group’s embargo
conditions.
PRESS RELEASES
This press release is copyright Nature Publishing Group. Its use is granted only for journalists and news
media receiving it directly from Nature Publishing Group. Full terms and conditions can be found here.
The best contacts for stories will always be the authors, but the editor who handled a paper may be
available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Please get in touch with Nature Publishing Group's
press contacts as listed below with any editorial enquiry.
We take great care not to hype the papers mentioned on our press releases. If you ever consider that a
story has been hyped, please do not hesitate to contact us at press@nature.com, citing the specific
example.
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
[1] Future extreme tropical storms threaten parts of Florida,
Australia and the Persian Gulf
An increased likelihood of extreme tropical storms, unpredictable from the historical record alone,
is expected in certain regions, according to a study published online in Nature Climate Change.
The increased risk of such ‘grey swan’ storms will impact Cairns, Australia; Tampa, Florida and
cities on the Persian Gulf.
Infrequent and high-impact storms that cannot be anticipated have been described as ‘black
swans'. In contrast, grey swans are extreme tropical cyclones that can induce devastating storm
surge impacts beyond what might be considered plausible based on the historical record alone,
but that may be foreseeable using physical knowledge together with historical data.
Ning Lin and Kerry Emanuel modelled the risk of storm surge from grey swan events for three
highly vulnerable coastline regions. They identify large potential risks in the Persian Gulf, where
tropical storms have never been recorded, as well as larger than expected threats in Tampa and
Cairns. The analysis shows that surges generated by simulated grey swan storms striking
Tampa, Cairns, and Dubai today could reach as high as 6, 5.7 and 4 metres, respectively.
Moreover, the simulations indicate the possibility of storm surges up to 7 and 11 metres for Dubai
and Tampa, respectively, by the end of the century.
Grey swan storm surges are not only projected to become more powerful over coming decades,
but the risk of them occurring is expected to increase due to climate change. Thus, the return
time of a grey swan storm with 6-metre storm surge for Tampa is estimated to fall from around
10,000 years today to 3,100–1,100 years by mid-century, with a further fall to 2,500–700 years
towards the end of the century. This means that the likelihood of such a storm in any given year
will be between around 4 and 14 times higher at the end of the century than it is today.
ARTICLE DETAILS
DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2777
Corresponding Author:
Ning Lin
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Email: nlin@princeton.edu Tel: +1 609 258 0266
Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends):
http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nclimate2777