Impact of Dissipative Heating on Tropical Cyclone Predictions

Dissipative heating due to surface friction has been demonstrated to have a significant impact on tropical cyclone (TC) intensities in numerical models. Our previous study on this subject using the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System also indicates that dissipative heating improves the skills of TC intensity forecasts. In this study, the dissipative heating is being incorporated into the NRL Navy Operation Global Atmosphere Prediction System (NOGAPS) as an effort to improve its forecast skills. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of dissipative heating on the global forecasts over different areas and for various weather systems. The energy budget will be examined with this added heat source. Changes in atmospheric profiles near the surface and in a deep layer will be evaluated. Our main focus is on the impact of the dissipative heating on tropical cyclone intensities. While coarse-resolution models such as NOGAPS are not designed for TC intensity forecasts, an improvement of the intensities would have an impact on the tracks, mainly through the interactions with environmental features. Detailed results will be presented at the meeting.