Beyond the wind radius: a complete, observationally-constrained tropical cyclone radial wind profile

Traditionally, metrics for storm size have focused on a set of canonical wind radii, such as the radii of maximum wind, hurricane force wind, and gale force wind. Here we seek a deeper understanding of the complete tropical cyclone radial wind profile. We present a complete physics-based tropical cyclone radial wind profile that merges existing theoretical profiles for the inner and outer regions. Data from an updated version of the QuikSCAT surface wind vector database are used to validate this profile. Such an effort should provide significant new insight into the underlying physics of tropical cyclone structure as well as improve the representation of the tropical cyclone wind field in risk analysis.