NOAA's Advancing the Prediction of Hurricanes Experiment (APHEX): Improving observations, understanding, and forecasts of tropical cyclones

NOAA's Hurricane Field Program, formally titled "Advancing the Prediction of Hurricanes Experiment" (APHEX), has been gathering observations of tropical cyclones for over 40 years. The program is led by scientists from the Hurricane Research Division at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. They partner with NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center, who maintain and operate the WP-3D and Gulfstream IV-SP (G-IV) Hurricane Hunter aircraft, and NCEP’s National Hurricane Center and Environmental Modeling Center, who task airborne missions to gather data used by forecasters for analysis and forecasting and for ingest into operational numerical weather prediction models. The goal of APHEX is to improve tropical cyclone (TC) forecasts using an integrated approach of analyzing observations from aircraft, initializing and evaluating forecast models with those observations, and developing new airborne instrumentation and observing strategies targeted at filling observing gaps and maximizing the data’s impact in model forecasts. This talk highlights recent APHEX contributions toward improved TC understanding and prediction. In particular, it describes how APHEX addresses high-priority forecast challenges, summarizes recent collaborations, describes advancements in observing systems monitoring structure and intensity, as well as in assimilation of aircraft data into operational models, and emphasizes key advances in understanding of TC processes, particularly those that lead to rapid intensification. The talk concludes with a discussion of how APHEX links to NOAA's Hurricane and Ocean Testbed to evaluate next-generation tropical cyclone monitoring and prediction capabilities.