Comparison of Tropical Cyclone Center Positions Determined from Satellite Observations at Infrared and Microwave Frequencies

Abstract

AbstractDetermining tropical cyclone (TC) center positions is of interest to many researchers who conduct TC analysis and forecasts. In this study, we develop and apply a TC centering technique to Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) observations of brightness temperature and report on an improvement of accuracy by adding a TC spectral analysis to the state of the art [Automated Rotational Center Hurricane Eye Retrieval (ARCHER)], especially for ATMS. We show that the ARCHER TC center-fixing algorithm locates TC centers more successfully based on the infrared channel with center frequency at 703.75 cm−1 (channel 89) of the CrIS than the ATMS channel 22 (183.31 ± 1.0 GHz) due to small-scale features in ATMS channel’s brightness temperature field associated with strong convective clouds. We propose to first apply the ARCHER TC center-fixing algorithm to ATMS channel 4 (51.76 GHz) that is less affected by small-scale convective clouds, and then to perform a set of the azimuthal spectral analysis of the ATMS channel-22 observations with tryout centers within a squared box centered at the ATMS channel-4-determined center. The center that gives the largest symmetric component is the final ATMS-determined center. Compared to the National Hurricane Center best track, the root-mean-square center-fixing errors determined from the two ATMS channels (one single CrIS channel) are 29.9 km (35.8 km) and 28.0 km (30.9 km) for 104 tropical storm and 81 hurricane cases, respectively, in the 2019 hurricane season.