The 23rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology

6D.7
SIMULATING EASTERLY WAVES DURING LATE AUGUST AND EARLY SEPTEMBER OF 1996 OVER WEST AFRICA WITH A REGIONAL CLIMATE MODEL

G S. Jenkins, Penn State University, University Park, PA; and C. Patti

From mid-August through early september of 1996, several easterly waves emerged from West Africa and developed into organized tropical systems in the Atlantic basin. Several of these systems: Dolly, Edouard, Fran and Hortense developed into hurricanes. In this presentation, we undertaken several month-long simulations with a regional climate model which is driven at the lateral boundaries with meteorological data by European Center Medium Range Forcast analyses at 12 hour intervals. The purpose of these simulations is to evaluate the model simulation of the easterly waves which became tropical systems. The simulations are carried out at 110 and 50 km grid spacing for the month of August and during early September. The evolution of the simulated easterly waves as the traverse westward over land into the Atlantic Ocean are compared the ECMWF analyses and satellite images. Further, we examine the large-scale tropical atmosphere during this time period and compare it to a mean climatology

The 23rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology