Abstract
The damage potential of a hurricane is widely considered to depend more
strongly on an integrated measure of the hurricane wind field, such as
Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE), than a point-based wind measure, such
as maximum sustained wind speed (Vmax). Recent work has
demonstrated that minimum sea level pressure (MSLP) is also an
integrated measure of the wind field. This study investigates how well
historical continental US hurricane damage is predicted by MSLP compared
to both Vmax and IKE for continental United States
hurricane landfalls for the period 1988–2020. We first show for the
entire North Atlantic basin that MSLP is much better correlated with IKE
(rrank = 0.50) than Vmax
(rrank = 0.26). We then show that continental US
hurricane normalized damage is better predicted by MSLP
(rrank = 0.81) than either Vmax
(rrank = 0.65) or IKE
(rrank = 0.68). For Georgia to Maine hurricane
landfalls specifically, MSLP and IKE show similar levels of skill at
predicting damage, whereas Vmax provides effectively no
predictive power. Conclusions for IKE extend to power dissipation as
well, as the two quantities are highly correlated because wind radii
closely follow a Rankine vortex. The physical relationship of MSLP to
IKE and power dissipation is discussed. In addition to better
representing damage, MSLP is also much easier to measure via aircraft or
surface observations than either Vmax or IKE, and it is
already routinely estimated operationally. We conclude that MSLP is an
ideal metric for characterizing hurricane damage risk.