Uses of satellite microwave measurements to improve hurricane predictions

Fuzhong Weng; Tong Zhu

doi:10.1117/12.569827

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5 January 2005 Uses of satellite microwave measurements to improve hurricane predictions

Fuzhong Weng, Tong Zhu

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Proceedings Volume 5658, Applications with Weather Satellites II; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.569827
Event: Fourth International Asia-Pacific Environmental Remote Sensing Symposium 2004: Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, Ocean, Environment, and Space, 2004, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

Numerical simulations of hurricanes often require an initial vortex field because the hurricane forecast models normally run at higher resolutions and the wind fields from the global forecast models tend to be too weak, especially for hurricanes at their incipient stages. A scheme was developed to produce more realistic hurricane vortices using the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) data (Zhu et al. 2002). Recently, several improvements were made to the scheme, including one-dimension variational analysis of atmospheric temperature profiles and two-dimensional optimal interpolation of the retrieved temperatures into the NCEP GFS data assimilation (GDAS) analysis fields for the three-dimension atmospheric temperature field within the storm and its environment. The analysis scheme is also generalized by using AMSU temperature anomaly fields, rather than the temperature itself and is therefore applicable for any NWP model outputs. It is shown that predictions of Hurricane Isabel (2003) from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model can be significantly improved with the AMSU derived hurricane initial vortex, in terms of improvements in storm tracks and intensity.

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Fuzhong Weng and Tong Zhu "Uses of satellite microwave measurements to improve hurricane predictions", Proc. SPIE 5658, Applications with Weather Satellites II, (5 January 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.569827

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