Climatological Analysis of Tropical Cyclone Occurrence Dates and Landfall Characteristics in the North Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are significant hazards to coastal and inland regions across the globe, especially in North America. North America is affected by TCs from two basins, the North Atlantic (NATL) and eastern North Pacific (ENP), with the former being the predominate focus of past research. In this dissertation, I present three studies that directly compare TCs in the NATL and ENP by using the same methods for each basin in studying occurrence dates and intraseasonal variability, effects of environmental parameters on occurrence dates and seasonal forecasting, and the behavior of TCs during the final 36 hours before landfall in North America. I found that TC occurrence dates in the NATL tend to be more variable and occur later in the year than those in the ENP. I also found that the correlation between environmental parameters, such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and local sea level pressure anomalies, and TC occurrence dates are consistent with the effect of these parameters on overall seasonal activity, with later occurrence dates aligning with the phases/anomalies that promote less active NATL or ENP hurricane seasons. Lastly, I found distinct geographic differences between the intensity change and translation speed of landfalling TCs, with latitude seeming to influence how positive or negative the intensity change the TC experiences and its average translation speed, while longitude seemed to influence the magnitude of acceleration or deacceleration before landfall. Potential implications for this research are wide-ranging, including in the context of seasonal and intraseasonal TC forecasting and climate attribution studies.