COAMPS-TC Forecasts for HFIP High Resolution Hurricane Tests

A comprehensive series of experiments were conducted using Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System – Tropical Cyclone (COAMPS®-TC) in support of the NOAA Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) High-Resolution Hurricane (HRH) modeling tests. COAMPS-TC modeling group is one of six groups participated in this effort and the goal is to assess the impacts of the higher horizontal resolution in hurricane forecasting. Over sixty hurricane cases in 2005 and 2007 were run using COAMPS-TC with moving nested grids at 9 km and 3 km resolutions. The model output data were created based on the requirements and delivered to DTC for evaluation. The results show that the higher resolution has a slight positive impact on hurricane intensity and structure, as well as rapid intensification and rapid decay processes, and it has little impact on the hurricane track forecasts. The 3 km simulations exhibit fine structure of the TC vortex. Detailed analysis and statistics for COAMPS-TC simulations will be presented at the conference.