Fig. 3: Sensitivity of sea-surface temperature (SST) and the thermodynamic component of the genesis potential index (GPIT) to dust optical depth in the single-column model simulation.
From: Natural and anthropogenic contributions to the hurricane drought of the 1970s–1980s
a Simulated SST and b GPIT as a function of dust optical thickness (τ) at 0.55 μm, under a weak temperature gradient constraint. The red dots are the values of SST and GPIT for dust concentrations representative of the 1970s–1980s hurricane drought (τ = 0.23) and of the entire period from 1960 to 2017 (τ = 0.19). The gray profiles represent simulations with single scattering albedo (ω0) perturbed so that the dust is more reflective (ω0 = 0.94) or more absorptive (ω0 = 0.84). Similar simulations where the asymmetry parameter (\(\hat{g}\)) is perturbed to values of 0.58 and 0.78 yield similar results.
