Hurricane Initialization in HWRF model

The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model is the operational hurricane model at NCEP since 2007. The hurricane initialization in HWRF model is a combination of vortex analysis and data assimilation. The vortex analysis reconstructs the background vortex based on observed storm position, storm size and storm intensity. Data assimilation further improves the storm structure by assimilating available new observations such as airborne radar data. For majority of the storms, inner core data is not available. We are currently working to add inner core satellite data. In the presentation, we will briefly review the hurricane initialization in current operational HWRF model, and discuss the impacts of the inner core satellite data on hurricane intensity forecasts.