1431 Assimilation of CYGNSS and GPM satellite data for improving hurricane forecasting

Wednesday, 25 January 2017
4E (Washington State Convention Center )
Zhaoxia Pu, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

This talk will present our recent progress on  1)  assessment of the impact of CYGNSS ocean surface wind speeds on hurricane track and intensity forecasts; and 2) assimilation of NASA GPM Microwave Imager (GMI)  clear-sky satellite radiances for improved hurricane forecasting.  NCEP operational HWRF model and a GSI-based ensemble-3DVAR hybrid data assimilation system are used in studies. Positive impacts on hurricane forecasts are found in assimilating both the CYGNSS ocean surface winds and the GPM satellite data.
Specifically, data impacts from CYGNSS observations are sensitive to the configuration of HWRF vortex initialization and data assimilation as well as various thining and super-obs methods.  For the GMI satellite radiances, bias correction plays an important role in obtaining improved analyses and forecasts.
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