A new coupled tropical cyclone-ocean model has been developed to study air-sea interaction under tropical cyclones. The tropical cyclone model is the GFDL/NOAA hurricane forecast model that is now in operational use by the US NWS and by the US Navy. The ocean model is a new movable nested-mesh ocean GCM developed for air-sea interaction studies. Using a movable nested-mesh system for both the tropical cyclone and ocean models allows matching high horizontal resolutions to be maintained for the atmosphere and ocean in the vicinity of the storm.
Both idealized and real-case simulations have been configured to test the performance of the coupled model and to examine the influence of the ocean coupling on the storm structure and intensity. For real-case simulations in the eastern and western Pacific, the ocean model is initialized with a realistic circulation from a multi-year spinup using monthly mean forcing climatologies.