Covarying TC-forced wind speed/wave height probabilities

The NHC wind speed probability product has proven to produce reliable estimates of the likelihood of locations receiving high winds, providing value to decision makers and an opportunity to develop objective warning criteria. For US Navy Fleet operations, the winds associated with TCs dictate whether ships must sortie from a harbor, but it is typically the seas associated with the TC that dictate when ships must sortie. In addition to the damaging winds created by TCs, the US Navy is also interested in the high sea states produced by those winds. To address those needs, a covarying distribution of winds and seas has been developed by replacing the TC winds predicted by the Navy's operational global prediction system with synthetic TC winds produced by the operational wind speed probability product and forcing an ensemble of Wave Watch III runs. The impact of the covarying distribution of winds and seas will be demonstrated in the context of objective aids for TC sortie decisions.