Tropical cyclone genesis from easterly waves in a regional climate model

This study evaluates the performance of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model in simulating the genesis of tropical cyclones (TCs) from easterly waves. The computational domain spans the entire tropical belt between 45 S and 45 N, with meridional boundary conditions and sea surface temperatures specified based on observations. The simulation covers 6 years from 2000-2005, which is long enough to establish a statistical depicition of the TC genesis process using thresholds of spectrally filtered rainfall data. Results show that the number of TCs which develop from easterly waves is generally too large in the model, as compared to observed. Nevertheless the TC genesis process appears to be reasonably well simulated, with evidence for both wave accumulation and critical layer processes being importantly involved.