Improvements in the GFDL Hurricane Prediction System

Abstract
The hurricane model initialization scheme developed at GFDL was modified to improve the representation of the environmental fields in the initial condition. The filter domain defining the extent of the tropical cyclone in the global analysis is determined from the distribution of the low-level disturbance winds. The shape of the domain is generally not circular in order to minimize the removal of important nonhurricane features near the storm region. An optimum interpolation technique is used to determine the environmental fields within the filter domain. Outside of the domain, the environmental fields are identical to the original global analysis. The generation process of the realistic and model-compatible vortex has also undergone some minor modifications so that reasonable vortices are produced for various data conditions. The upgraded hurricane prediction system was tested for a number of cases and compared against the previous version and yielded an overall improvement in the forecasts of s... Abstract The hurricane model initialization scheme developed at GFDL was modified to improve the representation of the environmental fields in the initial condition. The filter domain defining the extent of the tropical cyclone in the global analysis is determined from the distribution of the low-level disturbance winds. The shape of the domain is generally not circular in order to minimize the removal of important nonhurricane features near the storm region. An optimum interpolation technique is used to determine the environmental fields within the filter domain. Outside of the domain, the environmental fields are identical to the original global analysis. The generation process of the realistic and model-compatible vortex has also undergone some minor modifications so that reasonable vortices are produced for various data conditions. The upgraded hurricane prediction system was tested for a number of cases and compared against the previous version and yielded an overall improvement in the forecasts of s...

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: