An Evaluation of the Microphysics Fields of Hurricane Dennis (2005) at Different Stages of Its Lifecycle

This work will present an evaluation of the microphysics fields (i.e., hydrometeor concentration, vertical velocity, and reflectivity) from a high-resolution 1.67-km MM5 simulation of Hurricane Dennis (2005). This storm was sampled at all stages of its lifecycle, from weak tropical storm to major hurricane to post-landfall, by the NOAA P-3's and the NASA ER-2 during the joint NASA TCSP and NOAA IFEX experiment in July 2005. The fields produced from the simulation will be evaluated by comparing them with microphysical probe measurements from the NOAA P-3, vertical incidence Doppler vertical velocity and reflectivity from the NOAA P-3, and vertical velocity and reflectivity from the EDOP onboard the NASA ER-2. Attention will be given to the statistics from these various datasets and how their means and distributions vary at each stage of the storm's lifecycle. The evaluation of the model's ability to accurately reflect these microphysics statistics will provide an indication of how well it reproduces updrafts and downdrafts, hydrometeor production, conversion, and fallout, and latent heat release at various lifecycle stages.