Abstract
The goal of this paper is to introduce a new multi-storm atmosphere/ocean coupling scheme that was implemented and tested in the Basin-Scale Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF-B) model. HWRF-B, an experimental model developed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and supported by the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program, is configured with multiple storm-following nested domains to produce high-resolution predictions for several tropical cyclones (TCs) within the same forecast integration. The new coupling scheme parallelizes atmosphere/ocean interactions for each nested domain in HWRF-B, and it may be applied to any atmosphere/ocean coupled system. TC forecasts from this new hydrodynamical modeling system were produced in the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific from 2017–2019. The performance of HWRF-B was evaluated, including forecasts of TC track, intensity, structure (e.g., surface wind radii), and intensity change, and simulated sea-surface temperatures were compared with satellite observations. Median forecast skill scores showed significant improvement over the operational HWRF at most forecast lead times for track, intensity, and structure. Sea-surface temperatures cooled by 1–8 °C for the five HWRF-B case studies, demonstrating the utility of the model to study the impact of the ocean on TC intensity forecasting. These results show the value of a multi-storm modeling system and provide confidence that the multi-storm coupling scheme was implemented correctly. Future TC models within NOAA, especially the Unified Forecast System’s Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System, would benefit from the multi-storm coupling scheme whose utility and performance are demonstrated in HWRF-B here.
Highlights
Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and interactions between the ocean and atmosphere are critical components for forecasting the genesis and intensity changes of a tropical cyclone (TC)
A new coupling scheme was developed, with special attention paid to efficiency and the accuracy of surface field interpolation, which is especially important near sea/land boundaries
In the ocean initialization step, MPIPOM-TC is run for two model days without any wind forcing to spin up currents that are dynamically consistent with the temperature and salinity fields [59]
Summary
Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and interactions between the ocean and atmosphere are critical components for forecasting the genesis and intensity changes of a tropical cyclone (TC). A recent endeavor in HWRF-B development was to couple the atmosphere model with an ocean model for multiple TCs at high resolution For this purpose, a new coupling scheme was developed, with special attention paid to efficiency (i.e., virtually no coupling overhead compared to the standalone atmosphere model) and the accuracy of surface field interpolation, which is especially important near sea/land boundaries. A new coupling scheme was developed, with special attention paid to efficiency (i.e., virtually no coupling overhead compared to the standalone atmosphere model) and the accuracy of surface field interpolation, which is especially important near sea/land boundaries The goals of this manuscript are to introduce the multi-storm coupling scheme used in HWRF-B and to evaluate the resulting TC forecast performance of HWRF-B.
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