Non-linear response of hurricane vortices to heating perturbations in an observational regime

Airborne dual-Doppler radar data from rapidly intensifying Hurricane Guillermo (1997) is used to study the non-linear response of hurricane vortices to heating perturbations. The non-linear model used is the HIgh GRADient applications model (HIGRAD; Reisner et al. 2005), the vortices are directly from observations and the heating perturbations are 4-D retrievals of the latent heat of condensation in Guillermo. This study expands on the work of Nolan and Grasso (2003) and Nolan et al. (2007) by examining the role of the symmetric and asymmetric modes in an observational regime.