Low frequency variability of tropical cyclone potential intensity 2. Climatology for 1982–1995

In this note, we describe the method of calculating a climatology of tropical cyclone potential intensities for the years 1982–1995, as displayed at http://www.mit.edu/∼emanuel/pcmin/climo.html . The climatology has been constructed from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) Reanalysis and the Reynolds' Global Sea Surface Optimum Interpolation (OI) temperature analysis. We estimate errors in potential intensities resulting from known problems in the data and discuss the results.