Merging AMSR-E hydrometeor data with coastal radar data for short term high-resolution forecasts of Hurricane Ivan

In addition to the prediction of the path and intensity of the hurricane eye, the prediction of the detailed evolution of hurricane rainbands can be quite important for warnings and preparedness activities. In the United States, the operational radar network can provide data on the hurricane structure a couple hundred km from the coast. Microwave data on hydrometeors from polar oribiting satellites can be merged with the radar data to provide additional information further from the coast. In this work the hydrometeor data, rainfall rate from the AMSR-E Rain algorithm and oceanic cloud liquid water data from the Wentz AMSR-E Ocean algorithm are combined with WSR-88D radar data and used to initialize a non-hydrostatic numerical forecast model. The satellite data are combined with the radar data, geostationary satellite data and surface data in the ADAS complex cloud analysis. The cloud data are then used to apply latent heat adjustments in the initial conditions. In this ongoing work the very short-term spin-up of the model in the first hour is examined as well as the forecast up to landfall, and the results will be discussed in the extended abstract and presented at the conference.

Fig 1 below: Merged radar and AMSR-E satellite rainfall rates for hurricane Ivan at 1900 UTC 15 Sep. 2004.