Increasing vertical resolution in US models to improve track forecasts of Hurricane Joaquin with HWRF as an example

Banglin Zhang; Richard S Lindzen; Vijay Tallapragada; Fuzhong Weng; Qingfu Liu; Jason A Sippel; Zaizhong Ma; Morris A Bender

doi:10.1073/pnas.1613800113

Increasing vertical resolution in US models to improve track forecasts of Hurricane Joaquin with HWRF as an example

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Oct 18;113(42):11765-11769. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1613800113. Epub 2016 Oct 3.

Authors

Banglin Zhang¹, Richard S Lindzen², Vijay Tallapragada³, Fuzhong Weng⁴, Qingfu Liu³, Jason A Sippel⁵, Zaizhong Ma⁵, Morris A Bender⁶

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Modeling Center, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, College Park, MD 20740; I.M. Systems Group, Inc., College Park, MD 20740; rlindzen@mit.edu banglin.zhang@noaa.gov.
² Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; rlindzen@mit.edu banglin.zhang@noaa.gov.
³ Environmental Modeling Center, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, College Park, MD 20740.
⁴ Satellite Meteorology and Climatology Division, Center for Satellite Applications and Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, College Park, MD 20740.
⁵ Environmental Modeling Center, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, College Park, MD 20740; I.M. Systems Group, Inc., College Park, MD 20740.
⁶ Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton, NJ 08540.

Abstract

The atmosphere-ocean coupled Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast model (HWRF) developed at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) is used as an example to illustrate the impact of model vertical resolution on track forecasts of tropical cyclones. A number of HWRF forecasting experiments were carried out at different vertical resolutions for Hurricane Joaquin, which occurred from September 27 to October 8, 2015, in the Atlantic Basin. The results show that the track prediction for Hurricane Joaquin is much more accurate with higher vertical resolution. The positive impacts of higher vertical resolution on hurricane track forecasts suggest that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/NCEP should upgrade both HWRF and the Global Forecast System to have more vertical levels.

Keywords: HWRF; hurricane forecast; model development; vertical resolution.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't