Sensitivity of movement and intensity of severe cyclone AILA to the physical processes

Abstract

Accurate prediction of movement and intensity of tropical cyclone is still most challenging problem in numerical weather prediction. The positive progress in this field can be achieved by providing network of observations in the storm region and best representation of atmospheric physical processes in the model. In the present study later part was attempted to investigate the sensitivity of movement and intensity of the severe cyclonic storm AILA to different physical processes in the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Three sets of experiments were conducted for convection, microphysics (MP) and planetary boundary layer (PBL) processes. Model-simulated fields like minimum central surface pressure, maximum surface wind, track and vector displacement error are considered to test the sensitivity. The results indicate that the movement of the system is more sensitive to the cumulus physics and the intensity of the cyclone is sensitive to both PBL and cumulus physics. The combination of Betts Miller Janjic (BMJ) for convection, Yonsei University (YSU) for PBL and Purdue Lin (LIN) for microphysics is found to perform better than other combination schemes. The horizontal and vertical features of the system along with its special features like complete northward movement of the system throughout the travel period and the consistent cyclonic storm intensity until 15 hrs after the landfall could be well simulated by the model.