Studying the Processes Contributed to the Hairpin Turn of Hurricane Joaquin with WRF numerical simulations and TCI-2015 observations
Abstract
The prediction of Hurricane Joaquin's hairpin clockwise during 1 and 2 October 2015 presents a forecasting challenge during real-time numerical weather prediction, as tracks of several major numerical weather prediction models differ from each other. To investigate the large-scale environment and hurricane inner-core structures related to the hairpin turn of Joaquin, a series of high-resolution mesoscale numerical simulations of Hurricane Joaquin had been performed with an advanced research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The outcomes were compared with the observations obtained from the US Office of Naval Research's Tropical Cyclone Intensity (TCI) Experiment during 2015 hurricane season. Specifically, five groups of sensitivity experiments with different cumulus, boundary layer, and microphysical schemes as well as different initial and boundary conditions and initial times in WRF simulations had been performed. It is found that the choice of the cumulus parameterization scheme plays a significant role in reproducing reasonable track forecast during Joaquin's hairpin turn. The mid-level environmental steering flows can be the reason that leads to different tracks in the simulations with different cumulus schemes. In addition, differences in the distribution and amounts of the latent heating over the inner-core region are associated with discrepancies in the simulated intensity among different experiments. Detailed simulation results, comparison with TCI-2015 observations, and comprehensive diagnoses will be presented.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.A54F..04P
- Keywords:
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- 3315 Data assimilation;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3372 Tropical cyclones;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDS