Dan Chavas, Purdue University, will present "Using Imaginary Worlds to Understand Hurricanes on Earth." 

This talk will discuss the use of climate model simulation experiments to understand fundamental dynamical controls of hurricanes on an Earthlike planet. Idealized aquaplanet experiments and real-world simulations are employed to test existing and novel hypotheses for how hurricane genesis and size vary with latitude. A theory for the general behavior of hurricanes in a uniform convecting atmosphere is presented based on an interplay between two length scales -- the inverse-f scale and the Rhines scale. -- that generalizes our understanding of the f-plane to the rotating sphere. Results are directly compared with the real Earth to explain how this background state, driven by planetary dynamical forcing alone, is then modified in the presence of planetary thermodynamic forcing as is found on Earth. Overall, this work bridges important gaps in our understanding of hurricanes across basic theory, idealized worlds, and the real world.