Performance of Forecasts of Hurricanes with and without Upper-Level Troughs over the Mid-Latitudes

Abstract

We investigated the accuracy of operational medium-range ensemble forecasts for 29 Atlantic hurricanes between 2007 and 2019. Upper-level troughs with strong wind promoted northward movement of hurricanes over the mid-latitudes. For hurricanes with upper-level troughs, relatively large errors in the prediction of troughs result in large ensemble spreads, which result in failure to forecast hurricane track. In contrast, for hurricanes without upper-level troughs, mean central position errors are relatively small in all operational forecasts because of the absence of upper-level strong wind around troughs over the mid-latitudes. Hurricane Irma in September 2017 was accompanied by upper-level strong wind around a trough; errors and ensemble spreads for the predicted upper-level trough are small, contributing to smaller errors and small ensemble spreads in the predicted tracks of Irma. Our observing system experiment reveals that inclusion of additional Arctic radiosonde observation data obtained from research vessel Mirai in 2017 improves error and ensemble spread in upper-level trough with strong wind at initial time for forecast, increasing the accuracy of the forecast of the track of Irma in 2017.