Moisture Sources Identification of Tropical Cyclones in the North Atlantic

In this study, we identified the moisture sources of 110 tropical cyclones with cyclogenesis within the area comprised between 15–45°W and 8–20°N. We used the Lagrangian FLEXPART model to perform the analysis that computes the changes in the specific humidity of ten days before the day of cyclogenesis of each tropical cyclone and its contribution to the moisture budget of the region of interest. Then we calculated the anomaly values of the results to identify the main regions of moisture sources: The African coasts in the North Atlantic, the continental region over western Africa and the area along the South Atlantic from the Equator to the Southern Africa coast.