Tropical Cyclones Internal Dynamics and Its Influence over the Intensity Changes: WRF Idealized Simulation in a Quiescent Environment and GOES-R IR and GLM Data Analysis

Understanding the full range of dynamic and thermodynamic mechanisms that trigger or intensify tropical cyclones remains a significant challenge for tropical meteorology. Over the past five decades, there have been substantial scientific efforts, with a wide range of perspectives, aimed to the construction of a robust theoretical framework of the problem, as well as the development of crucial computational resources that allow using high-resolution numerical models for simulating both real and idealized tropical cyclones. Despite the advances, there are still unanswered questions and a high degree of uncertainty about the relative importance and implications of the processes modulating the intensity of the storms, and considerable room for improvement in tropical storm forecasting. This study aims to investigate the tropical storm internal dynamics associated with the strengthening of a tropical cyclone following two different approaches. We use the high-resolution non-hydrostatic Weather and Research and Forecasting Model (WRF-ARW) under several scheme configurations to study the evolution of a tropical cyclone-like vortex in a quiescent environment, in order to characterize the vortex-Rossby wave formation, propagation, and interaction with the mean flow, and we evaluate the response of the maximum wind speed and minimum pressure to localized instabilities, convective structures, and transport of heat, moisture, potential vorticity and momentum near the inner core, all under the light of the existing theoretical framework. Additionally, we use the GOES-R IR and GLM data for Western Hemisphere hurricanes in the 2018 and 2019 seasons to identify convective towers formed near the eyewall, and study their characteristics (size, distance from the eyewall, life cycle and trajectory) and their potential influence on storm intensity. Currently, there are several lines of research towards a better understanding of the tropical cyclone spin-up processes; in this work, we asses some of the existing paradigms proposed over the past few years following a combined observational and modeling approach.