The Tropical Cyclone Intensification Ratio: HWRF and Observations

It is proposed that tropical cyclone intensification can be diagnosed by virtue of the storm's kinematic structure. A non-dimensional parameter, the tropical cyclone intensification ratio is introduced and preliminary tested. The ratio involves the azimuthal average kinematic structure of the storm and can potentially be used in operational settings do determine whether a hurricane vortex is intensifying at the time of observations.

The numerical and empirical evaluation of the tropical cyclone intensification ratio includes HWRF and dropsonde-based estimations of azimuthal averaged quantities. Given the availability of observations in the context of the NASA Hurricane Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) field campaign, we mainly focus on observations and numerical integrations of Hurricane Edouard 2014, however idealized mesoscale integrations are also used.