The Effect of Precipitable Water on The Amount of Rainfall and The Rain-field Size for Tropical Cyclone Landfalling

Hurricanes are the biggest single events climatically, controlled by a variety of environmental conditions, including vertical wind shear, sea surface temperatures(SSTs), low-level vorticity, and moisture content of the lower and middle troposphere. When hurricanes make landfall, they can cause major damage to the landfall region from high rainfall totals, strong winds, flash floods and storm surges. In response to global warming, hurricane activity will continue to be impacted. Due to the massive damage to the society from hurricanes, it is becoming more important to have better understanding about hurricanes in order to reduce vulnerability. Therefore, more researches are required to have better prediction of where heavy rainfall will occur. Hurricane precipitation is associated with many environment conditions. In this paper, moisture conditions will be investigated around hurricanes 24hour prior to landfall in order to find how they impact on the amount of rainfall and the rain-field size for hurricanes landfalling over the U.S. Precipitable water will be used as a parameter of moisture conditions and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data will be used for hurricane precipitation. Geographic Information System (GIS)-based analysis will be employed for this research. Key Words:Tropical cyclone, Precipitable Water, Precipitation, GIS