Pacific Hurricane Landfalls on Mexico and SST.

A statistical model of northeastern Pacific Ocean tropical cyclones (TCs) is developed and used to estimate hurricane landfall rates along the coast of Mexico. Mean annual landfall rates for 1971-2014 are compared with mean rates for the extremely high northeastern Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) of 2015. Over the full coast, the mean rate and 5%-95% uncertainty range (in parentheses) for TCs that are category 1 and higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale (C1 + TCs) are 1.24 (1.05, 1.33) yr(-1) for 1971-2014 and 1.69 (0.89, 2.08) yr(-1) for 2015-a difference that is not significant. The increase for the most intense landfalls (category-5 TCs) is significant: 0.009 (0.006, 0.011) yr(-1) for 1971-2014 and 0.031 (0.016, 0.036) yr(-1) for 2015. The SST impact on the rate of category-5 TC landfalls is largest on the northern Mexican coast. The increased landfall rates for category-5 TCs are consistent with independent analysis showing that SST has its greatest impact on the formation rates of the most intense northeastern Pacific TCs. Landfall rates on Hawaii [0.033 (0.019, 0.045) yr(-1) for C1 + TCs and 0.010 (0.005, 0.016) yr(-1) for C3 + TCs for 1971-2014] show increases in the best estimates for 2015 conditions, but the changes are statistically insignificant.