Relationship of Rapid Intensification of Tropical Cyclones to Dynamical/Thermodynamical Parameters

Many avenues of research are currently being tried for understanding and prediction of hurricane intensity forecasts. We have listed several such research avenues that are being pursued by the research community. This study addresses the use of high resolution aircraft reconnaissance data sets that have been used for daily data assimilation covering three years of hurricane histories that cover rapid intensification cases. We show a number of dynamical and thermodynamical parameters, derived from these data sets, that seem to hold promise for future use in short range statistical forecasts on rapid intensification. These include the vertical differential of heating in the complete potential vorticity equation, the conversion of divergent kinetic energy to rotational kinetic energy, the transformation of shear vorticity to curvature vorticity and the advection of the earth's and the relative angular momentum into the inner core of hurricanes. In each of these parameters we find that a rapid growth in the time history of these parameters as the rapid intensification occurs. These are demonstrated for a number of recent hurricanes. A regression-based model utilizing these four parameters discussed, with potential operational application towards the prediction of rapid intensity changes within tropical cyclones is also included in this present study.