Hurricane forecasting with the high‐resolution NASA finite volume general circulation model

Abstract

A high‐resolution finite volume general circulation model (fvGCM), resulting from a development effort of more than ten years, is now being run operationally at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center. The model is based on a finite volume dynamical core with terrain‐following Lagrangian control volume discretization and performs efficiently on massive parallel architectures. The computational efficiency allows simulations at a resolution of a quarter of a degree, which is double the resolution currently adopted by most global models in operational weather centers. Such fine global resolution brings us closer to overcoming a fundamental barrier in global atmospheric modeling for both weather and climate, because tropical cyclones can be more realistically represented. In this work, preliminary results are shown. Fifteen simulations of four Atlantic tropical cyclones in 2002 and 2004, chosen because of varied difficulties presented to numerical weather forecasting, are performed. The fvGCM produces very good forecasts of these tropical systems, adequately resolving problems like erratic track, abrupt recurvature, intense extratropical transition, multiple landfall and reintensification, and interaction among vortices.