Validation of a Tropical Cyclone Steering Response Function with a Barotropic Adjoint Model

Abstract

Abstract The steering of a tropical cyclone (TC) vortex is commonly understood as the advection of the TC vortex by an “environmental wind.” In past studies, the environmental steering wind vector has been defined by the horizontal and vertical averaging of the horizontal winds in a box centered on the TC. The components of this environmental steering have been proposed as response functions to derive adjoint-derived sensitivities of TC zonal and meridional steering. The appropriateness of these response functions in adjoint sensitivity studies of TC steering is tested using a two-dimensional barotropic model and its adjoint for a 24-h forecast. It is found that these response functions do not produce sensitivities to TC steering because perturbations to the model initial conditions that change the final-time location of the TC also change the response functions in ways that have nothing to do with the steering of the TC at model verification. An alternate response function is proposed wherein the environmental steering vector is defined as the wind averaged over the response function box attributed to vorticity outside of that box. By redefining the response functions for the zonal and meridional steering as components of this environmental steering vector, the effect of small changes to the final-time location of the TC is removed, and the resultant sensitivity gradients can be shown to truly represent the sensitivity of TC steering to perturbations of the model forecast state.