Evaluation of an Experimental Potential Gale Force Wind Swath Using GPCE to Account For JTWC Forecast Confidence

The JTWC Potential Gale Force Wind Swath, commonly referred to as the ship avoidance area in naval maritime operations, is constructed using only knowledge of the JTWC 34-knot wind radii values and five year running mean forecast errors. Although swath sizes have generally decreased as forecast error has improved, high-confidence forecast scenarios could potentially have smaller swaths, and thus increased battlespace operating area, if knowledge of the forecast uncertainty was applied to the generation of this product. Alternately, larger swaths may be appropriate in low-confidence forecast cases. An initial evaluation of a new Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting System (ATCF) capability to weight the swath width at each tau by the ratio of the Goerss Predicted Consensus Error (GPCE) to the corresponding climatological error (GPCC) will be presented.