Cargando…

Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity

Tornadoes cause loss of life and damage to property each year in the United States and around the world. The largest impacts come from ‘outbreaks' consisting of multiple tornadoes closely spaced in time. Here we find an upward trend in the annual mean number of tornadoes per US tornado outbreak...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tippett, Michael K., Cohen, Joel E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4773447/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26923210
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10668
_version_ 1782418741340930048
author Tippett, Michael K.
Cohen, Joel E.
author_facet Tippett, Michael K.
Cohen, Joel E.
author_sort Tippett, Michael K.
collection PubMed
description Tornadoes cause loss of life and damage to property each year in the United States and around the world. The largest impacts come from ‘outbreaks' consisting of multiple tornadoes closely spaced in time. Here we find an upward trend in the annual mean number of tornadoes per US tornado outbreak for the period 1954–2014. Moreover, the variance of this quantity is increasing more than four times as fast as the mean. The mean and variance of the number of tornadoes per outbreak vary according to Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling (TL), with parameters that are consistent with multiplicative growth. Tornado-related atmospheric proxies show similar power-law scaling and multiplicative growth. Path-length-integrated tornado outbreak intensity also follows TL, but with parameters consistent with sampling variability. The observed TL power-law scaling of outbreak severity means that extreme outbreaks are more frequent than would be expected if mean and variance were independent or linearly related.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4773447
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher Nature Publishing Group
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-47734472016-03-04 Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity Tippett, Michael K. Cohen, Joel E. Nat Commun Article Tornadoes cause loss of life and damage to property each year in the United States and around the world. The largest impacts come from ‘outbreaks' consisting of multiple tornadoes closely spaced in time. Here we find an upward trend in the annual mean number of tornadoes per US tornado outbreak for the period 1954–2014. Moreover, the variance of this quantity is increasing more than four times as fast as the mean. The mean and variance of the number of tornadoes per outbreak vary according to Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling (TL), with parameters that are consistent with multiplicative growth. Tornado-related atmospheric proxies show similar power-law scaling and multiplicative growth. Path-length-integrated tornado outbreak intensity also follows TL, but with parameters consistent with sampling variability. The observed TL power-law scaling of outbreak severity means that extreme outbreaks are more frequent than would be expected if mean and variance were independent or linearly related. Nature Publishing Group 2016-02-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4773447/ /pubmed/26923210 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10668 Text en Copyright © 2016, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Tippett, Michael K.
Cohen, Joel E.
Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
title Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
title_full Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
title_fullStr Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
title_full_unstemmed Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
title_short Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
title_sort tornado outbreak variability follows taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4773447/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26923210
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10668
work_keys_str_mv AT tippettmichaelk tornadooutbreakvariabilityfollowstaylorspowerlawoffluctuationscalingandincreasesdramaticallywithseverity
AT cohenjoele tornadooutbreakvariabilityfollowstaylorspowerlawoffluctuationscalingandincreasesdramaticallywithseverity