Evaluation of FAMIL2 in Simulating the Climatology and Seasonal‐to‐Interannual Variability of Tropical Cyclone Characteristics

Abstract

AbstractWe evaluate the ability of the latest generation atmospheric general circulation model from State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (namely, FAMIL2) in simulating some key characteristics (genesis location, track, number, and intensity) of tropical cyclones (TCs) in terms of their climatology and seasonal to interannual variability. A standard 1° × 1° atmospheric model intercomparison project experiment is carried out for the period 1979–2002, and the last 20 years of outputs are used for analysis. The same period from International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) is used as the observation for comparison purposes. The evaluations focus on TC activity at the global scale as well as in the three key regions of the northern Indian Ocean (NIO), western Pacific (WP) and northern Atlantic (NA). With respect to the simulated TC climatology, FAMIL2 shows notable ability in correctly reproducing the main characteristics of the genesis locations, tracks, and numbers of TC, particularly over the key regions of TC activity in the Northern Hemisphere; whereas, it underestimates the intensities of TC, as is the case with many state‐of‐the‐art climate models operating at a medium resolution. On seasonal‐to‐interannual time scales, meanwhile, FAMIL2 successfully reproduces the seasonal cycles of TC numbers over the NIO and WP regions, the former being characterized by double TC peaks (in May and October) and the latter by a maximum peak season in August. However, the model only captures these features approximately. For the simulated interannual variability of TC activity, the correlation coefficients of 20‐year TC numbers between FAMIL2 and IBTrACS are 0.22, 0.51 (95% confidence interval), and 0.49 (95% confidence interval) for the NIO, WP, and NA, respectively. We also examine the possible reasons behind the performance of FAMIL2 by investigating its subseasonal signs related to the Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO) and convectively coupled equatorial waves. The TC genesis potential index is employed to investigate the possible impacts of the large‐scale dynamic fields on the simulation of TC activity. Finally, the biases of simulated TC activity, as well as possible solutions for these biases, are discussed with respect to the horizontal resolution of the model. A TC forecasting case study is introduced as a first step in applying FAMIL2 to a TC forecasting system.