The threat to life and property from Tropical Cyclones/Hurricanes (referred to hereafter as TCs) is well recognized by the scientific community and the general public. To better understand and predict a hurricane's track and its intensity, it is important to consider climate factors that influence those characteristics. While the TC forecasting has received significant attention both on the scales of weather and climate prediction, it has yet to be comprehensively studied on both scales when coupled together. The PI will conduct a climatological study for Atlantic basin TCs using the past 100-year TC record (1900-2004) to provide satellite data assimilation guidance (i.e., targeted data assimilation strategy) for numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. Existing climatological TC records will be analyzed to create a database that serves as a basis for satellite data assimilation guidance. Then the developed data assimilation guidance will be implemented and validated in an NWP model. Finally, TC intensity forecasting with the aid of NWP models that use unstructured adaptive and nested grid techniques coupled with the data assimilation methodology will be studied in detail.
Broader Impacts: The research will improve TC and medium-range weather forecasting that is useful to the academic and operational modeling communities.
