Exploring the Real-Time WRF Forecast Skill for Four Tropical Storms, Isaias, Henri, Elsa and Irene, as They Impacted the Northeast United States

Abstract

Tropical storm Isaias (2020) moved quickly northeast after its landfall in North Carolina and caused extensive damage to the east coast of the United States, with electric power distribution disruptions, infrastructure losses and significant economic and societal impacts. Improving the real-time prediction of tropical storms like Isaias can enable accurate disaster preparedness and strategy. We have explored the configuration, initialization and physics options of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to improve the deterministic forecast for Isaias. The model performance has been evaluated based on the forecast of the storm track, intensity, wind and precipitation, with the support from in situ measurements and stage IV remote sensing products. Our results indicate that the Global Forecasting System (GFS) provides overall better initial and boundary conditions compared to the North American Model (NAM) for wind, mean sea level pressure and precipitation. The combination of tropical suite physics options and GFS initialization provided the best forecast improvement, with error reduction of 36% and an increase of the correlation by 11%. The choices for model spin-up time and forecast cycle did not affect the forecast of the storm significantly. In order to check the consistency of the result found from the investigation related to TS Isaias, Irene (2011), Henri (2021) and Elsa (2021), three other tropical storms, were also investigated. Similar to Isaias, these storms are simulated with NAM and GFS initialization and different physics options. The overall results for Henri and Elsa indicate that the models with GFS initialization and tropical suite physics reduced error by 44% and 57%, respectively, which resonates with the findings from the TS Isaias investigation. For Irene, the initialization used an older GFS version and showed increases in error, but applying the tropical physics option decreased the error by 20%. Our recommendation is to consider GFS for the initialization of the WRF model and the tropical physics suite in a future tropical storm forecast for the NE US.