North-south variations of tropical storm genesis locations in the Western Hemisphere

In the Western Hemisphere, tropical storms or hurricanes form in the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific. Previous studies have focused on storm variability in the frequency, duration, and intensity in each basin. Here we find that the tropical storm genesis location in one ocean basin ties to the other one. On both interannual and multidecadal time scales, a northward (southward) shift of the tropical storm genesis location is associated with a southward (northward) variation in the other ocean basin. The change of cross-Central America wind in the upper troposphere, which induces an out-of-phase relation of vertical wind shear, bridges storm activity in the two ocean basins. Sea surface temperatures in both the tropical Pacific and North Atlantic can induce the zonal wind change across Central America. An implication of this study is that hurricane outlooks can be improved by considering the two ocean basins together, and thus helping reduce the damage caused by hurricane landfall.