Overview of the NOAA/NCEP Operational Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) Modelling System

Abstract

Prediction of track and intensity of a tropical cyclone (TC) is one of the many challenging problems in meteorology, but very important for issuing timely warning for many agencies engaged in disaster preparedness and mitigation. Hurricane forecasting is one of the most important areas of modelling at Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) modelling system for hurricane prediction, developed by scientists at EMC, in collaboration with various academic and government agencies, is a sophisticated, high-resolution, atmosphere-ocean coupled model designed to resolve inner-core features of hurricanes and to improve our understanding of multi-scale, spatio-temporal interactions of storm circulations within the large-scale environment. The HWRF modelling system became operational at NCEP starting with the 2007 hurricane season. It provides high-resolution track, intensity and structure forecast guidance to the operational forecasters at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) for all tropical cyclones in their area of responsibility (Atlantic and Eastern Pacific, and Central Pacific, respectively). Recent efforts supported by NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) allowed the HWRF team to expand the applications of the HWRF modelling system (henceforth to be referred to simply as ‘HWRF’) for tropical cyclone forecasts for all Northern Hemispheric tropical ocean basins, including North Indian Ocean and North Western Pacific Ocean.