Research Summaries

Back Advancing understanding, analyses, and predictions of tropical cyclone rapid intensification from new-generation geostationary meteorological satellite

Fiscal Year 2021
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Meteorology
Investigator(s) Powell, Scott
Sponsor Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary The proposed research involves tropical cyclone (TC) rapid intensification (RI). Efforts will utilize new-generation satellite GOES-16 atmospheric motion vector (AMV) datasets that have continuous (10-minute) full-disk coverage with higher spatial resolution and higher quality than previous AMV datasets. With newly developed analysis and modeling tools, the new-generation geostationary satellites give us the opportunity to continuously monitor the precursor conditions to rapid intensification (RI), the horizontal and vertical structure of TC vortices, and the interaction of the TC outflow with the environment. The first focus in our study will be the second RI in Hurricane Irma (2017) from 100 kt at 00 UTC 4 September to 150 kt at 12 UTC 5 September (i.e., 50 kt in 36 h). Since the timing of RI is a critical forecast issue, the first objective will be to document that our analyses based on high frequency (15-minute) GOES-16 AMVs will provide a definitive documentation of the timing of the second RI. The second objective will be to demonstrate the capability of the COAMPS-TC regional model initialized with our analyses to predict the timing and the magnitude of the RI. Although not validated yet, the Wisconsin based CIMSS group has created incredible high spatial resolution AMV datasets with a new Optical Flow (OF) technique that define the divergence and convergence over the TC CDO so well that the COAMPS-TC model physics will be able to infer the vertical ascent/descent, and thus the convective diabatic heating distribution in the vertical and in the horizontal. Our proposed OF AMV-based diagnostic studies for a series of RI events will provide a better understanding, and our regional/global model predictions initiated from our dual-constrained dynamic initialization will improve our capability to forecast, the dynamically changing multiscale RI events.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal