Abstract

A new tropical cyclone initialization scheme is implemented into the Naval Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS). A key element of this new scheme is to utilize retrieved 3D temperature fields from Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) level-B data. The retrieved 3D temperature fields are used to construct hurricane 3D geopotential height and wind fields based on the hydrostatic and nonlinear balance equations. The so-derived hurricane wind fields are validated against the aircraft observations for various hurricane cases in the tropical Atlantic. The derived wind and pressure fields are in general better than those from the old scheme. A preliminary hindcast experiment with the new scheme shows encouraging improvement in hurricane track forecast.