On the Use of Ocean Dynamic Temperature for Hurricane Intensity Forecasting

Journal Article · Wed Feb 28 00:00:00 EST 2018 · Weather and Forecasting

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-17-0143.1· OSTI ID:1423174

Balaguru, Karthik ^[1]; Foltz, Gregory R. ^[2]; Leung, L. Ruby ^[3]; Hagos, Samson M. ^[3]; Judi, David R. ^[4]

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1. Marine Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Seattle, Washington
2. Physical Oceanography Division, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Miami, Florida
3. Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington
4. Earth Systems Science, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington

Abstract

Sea surface temperature (SST) and tropical cyclone heat potential (TCHP) are metrics used to incorporate the ocean’s influence on hurricane intensification into the National Hurricane Center’s Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS). While both SST and TCHP serve as useful measures of the upper-ocean heat content, they do not accurately represent ocean stratification effects. Here, it is shown that replacing SST within the SHIPS framework with a dynamic temperature Tdy, which accounts for the oceanic negative feedback to the hurricane’s intensity arising from storm-induced vertical mixing and sea surface cooling, improves the model performance. While the model with SST and TCHP explains about 41% of the variance in 36-h intensity changes, replacing SST with Tdy increases the variance explained to nearly 44%. These results suggest that representation of the oceanic feedback, even through relatively simple formulations such as Tdy, may improve the performance of statistical hurricane intensity prediction models such as SHIPS.

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• OSTI ID: 1423174
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1438976; OSTI ID: 1488450
• Journal Information: Weather and Forecasting, Journal Name: Weather and Forecasting Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 33; ISSN 0882-8156
• Publisher: American Meteorological Society
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English