Spatio-temporal pattern of tropical cyclones: The case of cyclones of the bay of Bengal

Abstract

For the last few decades, the generalized pattern of tropical cyclones has gone through an unstable system transformation in the global changing climatic scenario. Thus, the broad aim of this research work was to explore the spatio-temporal changing pattern of tropical cyclones in the basin of the Bay of Bengal between 1985 and 2019. Cyclone track information data have been collected from Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) server and Bangladesh Meteorological Department. The loss and damage statistics has been collected from different published sources. Geographical distributional characteristics such as mean center and standard directional distribution have been explored using the spatial statistical tool of ArcMap. The mean geographic center has been identified near the district of Bhola and Patuakhali. The cyclonic occurrences in the research area are oriented north-west to south-east according to standard directional distribution. Hot spot analysis was used to identify the most affected parts in the study area and found that there are no significant hotspots, but the distribution pattern is rather random. However, there are two minor concentration zones in the study area, one near Barguna and another one near Sandwip coast. SPSS software was also used here to analyze the relationship between cyclonic events and the loss/damage scenarios of the study area. The relationship between cyclonic velocity and damage of life and livelihood showed a strong correlation of .804 with a significance level of 99% (p < .01). Random cyclonic trends and patterns indicate a change in this region's climatic variability over the past 35 years.