Novel Products to Track Propagating Convective Features in Tropical Cyclones

For more than 20 years, NASA’s Short-Term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center has developed research and products for operational forecasters, including tools for tropical cyclone (TC) analysis and forecasting. This presentation describes novel products recently developed in 2021-2023 that enable propagating convective features in TCs to be more easily tracked. Over the past decade, new research has revealed the importance of propagating convection in TC structural and intensity evolution, including the TC diurnal cycle, propagating rain bands, secondary eyewall formation, and TC intensity change – particularly in the presence of environmental vertical wind shear. This, together with the advent of new instruments such as the Advanced Baseline Imager and Geostationary Lightning Mapper aboard the new generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and constellations of smallsats such as NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) present new opportunites and challenges in tracking TC convection. Recent research and products developed at SPoRT leverage the capabilities of these new datasets while also remediating some of the challenges presented by the ever-growing data volume provided by new instruments – particularly smallsat constellations such as TROPICS. This presentation describes these new products and the research that enables them, and details how the products can be used together with existing tools to better analyze TC structure and intensity change.