Tropical Cyclone Prediction Through Multiple Global-model Ensemble Forecast System

NOAA established the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) to develop a 10-year strategy to improve hurricane forecasts. Reducing the average errors of hurricane track and intensity forecasts by 50% is the major goal. The efforts will be achieved by the enhanced observation and data assimilation, the improvement of numerical model systems, and the expanded forecast applications based on the high resolution and ensemble based numerical prediction systems.

This study is focused on tropical cyclone track forecast based on the multiple-model super ensemble forecast system. We use three global ensemble forecast systems, which are being run in National Center of Environmental Prediction (NCEP), Canadian Meteorology Center (CMC) and European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The global tropical cyclone track calculations with the bias-correction prediction data from the North American Ensemble Forecast System (NAEFS, including NCEP and CMC) are also combined in this super ensemble prediction system. The results show encouraging improvements for hurricane /typhoon track prediction through this multiple global-model ensemble forecast system.