Subtropical Cyclone Anita's Potential to Tropical Transition Under Warmer Sea Surface Temperature Scenarios

On 6 March 2010, Anita, the first subtropical cyclone observed over the South Atlantic Ocean, formed near the southeastern coast of Brazil, and during its life cycle, Anita almost acquired a tropical structure. The potential of Anita to undergo tropical transition in scenarios of increased sea surface temperature (SST) was investigated through a set of numerical sensitivity experiments. The results show that, if the SST had been 2 degrees C warmer throughout Anita's life cycle, the system would have undergone tropical transition in its maturity stage; however, if the SST had increased only during Anita's quasi-stationary period, the tropical transition completion would have occurred only with higher values of SST (6 degrees C).