Impact of the current feedback on the representation of tropical cyclones in coupled models

Tropical Cyclones (TCs) are among the most destructive natural phenomena on Earth and severely impact nearly a billion people. Coupled models have become a necessary tool to improve our knowledge on those natural hazards. Improving their ability to statistically represent TCs is of prior importance. In the present study, we investigate the impact of the mechanical interaction between the surface oceanic current and the atmosphere (i.e., the Current FeedBack, CFB) on the statistic of TCs in different basins. We perform sensitivity experiments using the EC-Earth model in its High-Resolution version (1/12˚), by switching on and off CFB. As CFB has been shown to strongly improve the realism of the oceanic circulation at both large scale and mesoscale, we expect an improvement, i.e., a better realism, of the statistical TCs representation when CFB is taken into account in the model. Improving coupled models will help design forecast schemes with lead times longer than those currently provided by operational forecasts centers.