26th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology

Wednesday, 5 May 2004: 11:15 AM
Recent Improvements to Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System for Tropical Cyclone Intensity Forecast
Napoleon II Room (Deauville Beach Resort)
Chi-Sann Liou, NRL, Monterey, CA; and Y. Jin
Poster PDF (149.7 kB)
Navy has devoted considerable efforts to extend the Navy operational mesoscale model, Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPSTM), to be a tropical cyclone (TC) forecast model with the emphasis on TC structure and intensity forecast. Recent improvements to the forecast system include an upgrade to the high resolution tropical cyclone initialization method, implementation of automated moving inner meshes to follow selected tropical cyclones, development of a dynamic internal tracker, and upgrades to physical parameterization schemes and lateral boundary condition treatment. These improvements have significantly raised COAMPS capability toward a skillful dynamic model for TC structure and intensity forecast. However, there are still problems remained to be solved before COAMPS can be declared as a skillful dynamic model for TC structure and intensity forecast. This paper will summarize the above improvements, assess the current skill of COAMPS in TC structure and intensity forecast, present the leading problems of the TC intensity forecast in COAMPS, and discuss our future plans to tackle these problems.

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