OSSE Evaluation of Potential Aircraft Reconnaissance Flight Patterns and their Impact on Hurricane Forecasts

Each year, NOAA/AOML's Hurricane Research Division (HRD) conducts its Hurricane Field Program in which tropical cyclones are sampled via NOAA aircraft to improve the understanding and prediction of hurricanes. Mission experiments propose a variety of sampling strategies and flight patterns aimed towards their respective goals described by the Intensity Forecasting Experiment (IFEX; Rogers et al., BAMS, 2006, 2013), a collaborative effort among HRD, NHC, and EMC. Evaluating the potential impact of various adjustments in design is valuable for determining the optimal aircraft flight pattern for a given mission. AOML's HRD has developed a system for performing regional Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) to assess the potential impact of prospective observing systems on hurricane track and intensity forecasts and analyses. This experiment focuses on examining the possible impact of proposed aircraft reconnaissance observing system designs. Aircraft instrument and flight level retrievals were simulated from a regional WRF-ARW Nature Run (Nolan et al., 2013) spanning 13 days, covering the life cycle of a rapidly intensifying Atlantic tropical cyclone. The aircraft tracks are simulated in a variety of ways and are assessed to investigate the potential impact of aircraft reconnaissance observations on hurricane track and intensity forecasts.