92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Monday, 23 January 2012: 11:30 AM
Tropical Cyclone Core Structure Climatology From Satellite Measurements
Room 257 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Joshua Cossuth, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee, FL; and R. E. Hart

Previous studies demonstrate that there is a relationship between a tropical cyclone's (TC) track and intensity (e.g. Velden and Leslie 1991, Emanuel et al. 2004) Increasing observations of environmental parameters and their assimilation as modeled variables during the past few decades have significantly enhanced the predictability of TC track, though there has been no concomitant increase in intensity prediction (Franklin and Cangialosi 2011). Despite this disconnect, statistical models that primarily use environmental conditions (e.g. DeMaria et al. 2005) are among the top performing methods to forecast TC intensity. Furthermore, Burpee et al. (1996) demonstrate that additional observations inside and around TCs reduce forecast error. The benefits of incorporating TC core observations to improve intensity forecasts are demonstrated in Murray (2009).

Toward this end, a climatology of TC inner-core structure is compiled and analyzed. Building upon the research of Piech (2007) and Murray (2009), which gathered and assessed aircraft reconnaissance measurements and compared them to TC intensity changes, satellite measurements from the HURSAT database (Knapp 2008) are used to diagnose TC structure and intensity. An analogue to reconnaissance observations is produced for all worldwide TCs from 1987-2009 using ARCHER software (Wimmers and Velden 2010). From this climatology, patterns of TC structure with respect to location and intensity can be used as an aid to TC prediction. As this climatology is expanded, validation of model performance may eventually reach beyond just track and intensity, but can include TC internal structure as well.

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