We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
Sensitivity of Typhoon Forecasts to Different Subsets of Targeted Dropsonde Observations.
- Authors
Harnisch, Florian; Weissmann, Martin
- Abstract
For the first time, joint tropical cyclone (TC) surveillance missions by several aircraft were conducted in the western North Pacific basin within the framework of The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) Pacific Asian Regional Campaign (T-PARC) 2008. The collected dropsonde observations were divided into three different subsets depending on their location relative to the TC to investigate which observations are most beneficial for typhoon track forecasting. Data denial experiments with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) global model were performed to analyze the influence of the different dropsonde subsets. In these experiments, the largest TC track forecast improvements are found for observations in the vicinity of the storm, placed at a circular ring at the outer boundary of the TC. In contrast, observations in remote regions indicated to be sensitive by singular vectors seem to have a relatively small influence with a slight positive tendency on average. Observations in the TC core and center lead to large analysis differences, but only very small mean forecast improvements. This is likely related to the fact that even modern high-resolution global models cannot fully resolve the TC center and thus can only use a relatively small part of the information provided by observations within the TC center. Times prior to landfall and recurvature are stronger affected by additional observations, while the influence on the track forecast after recurvature is relatively weak.
- Subjects
NORTH Pacific Region; TYPHOON tracks; WEATHER forecasting; GEOPHYSICAL prediction; TROPICAL cyclones; METEOROLOGICAL observations
- Publication
Monthly Weather Review, 2010, Vol 138, Issue 7, p2664
- ISSN
0027-0644
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1175/2010MWR3309.1