The role of antecedent surface vorticity development as a conditioning process in explosive cyclone intensification

We examine the idea that antecedent vorticity development, defined as the surface vorticity spinup in the period prior to a cyclone's maximum intensification, is an important dynamical conditioning process for explosive cyclogenesis. Previous suggestions from case study research that subsequent intensification may be proportional to the intensity of the preexisting circulation are supported through the systematic study of a large sample of weakly and explosively developing cyclones in the North Pacific and North Atlantic basins. Additional support for this concept is found with an examination of composite weakly and strongly developing cyclones at the onset of their most rapid intensification period. At this onset, the strongly developing cyclone composite has substantially stronger surface circulation and vorticity than is found in a composite of the weak cases. Ensembles of successive forecasts of an explosive cyclogenesis case during the Experiment on Rapidly Intensifying Cyclones over the Atlantic (ERICA) suggest similar dynamical behavior, in that small errors in the surface intensity subsequently amplify into larger errors only 12 h later under predominantly similar upper-level conditions. The temporal evolution of large-scale geostrophic vorticity for 62 cases of cyclogenesis shows that stretching in the presence of relative vorticity is present throughout the life cycle of both the weakly and rapidly developing cases. An examination of 794 cyclones in the North Pacific basin reveals a general trend of increased maximum development as the antecedent deepening increases. Explosively developing cyclones are preferentially characterized by at least 12 h of antecedent development. We investigate the relationship between the amplitude of the 500-mb quasigeostrophic-ascent forcing and maximum surface cyclone intensification and find a significant positive correlation, as previous studies have shown. However, computations with model-based surface convergence suggest that the response to the upper-level forcing is conditioned by the low-level antecedent vorticity development. Furthermore, variations in successive numerical weather prediction model forecasts of maximum cyclone intensification are well correlated with variations in the initial surface vorticity as well as variations in the 500-mb forcing. This study suggests that explosive development is typically characterized by a nonlinear interaction between two cyclonic disturbances in the lower and uppe