Sensitivity of hurricane track to cumulus parameterization schemes in the WRF model for three intense tropical cyclones: impact of convective asymmetry

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of the choice of convective parameterization (CP) scheme on the simulated tracks of three intense tropical cyclones (TCs), using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. We focus on diagnosing the competing influences of large-scale steering flow, beta drift and convectively induced changes in track, as represented by four different CP schemes (Kain–Fritsch (KF), Betts–Miller–Janjic (BMJ), Grell-3D (G-3), and the Tiedtke (TD) scheme). The sensitivity of the results to initial conditions, model domain size and shallow convection is also tested. We employ a diagnostic technique by Chan et al. (J Atmos Sci 59:1317–1336, 2002) that separates the influe..