Five-day track forecast skills of WRF model for the western North Pacific tropical cyclones

Abstract

AbstractIn this study, the characteristics of simulated tropical cyclones (TCs) over the western North Pacific by a regional model (the WRF model) are verified. We utilize 12 km horizontal grid spacing, and simulations are integrated for 5 days from model initialization. One hundred and twenty-five forecasts are divided into five clusters through the k-means clustering method. The TCs in the cluster 1 and 2 (group 1), which includes many TCs moves northward in subtropical region, generally have larger track errors than for TCs in cluster 3 and 4 (group 2). The optimal steering vector is used to examine the difference in the track forecast skill between these two groups. The bias in the steering vector between the model and analysis data is found to be more substantial for group 1 TCs than group 2 TCs. The larger steering vector difference for group 1 TCs indicates that environmental fields tend to be poorly simulated in group 1 TC cases. Furthermore, the residual terms, including the storm-scale process, asymmetric convection distribution, or beta-related effect, are also larger for group 1 TCs than group 2 TCs. Therefore, it is probable that the large track forecast error for group 1 TCs is a result of unreasonable simulations of environmental wind fields and residual processes in the midlatitudes.